Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James FeatherGood evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, June 8, 2026. First Order of Business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me.

Speaker 12I pledge allegiance to the flag

James Featherof the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Speaker 6Thank you.

James FeatherOur next order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda. The agenda was issued publicly as required. Are there any comments or proposed changes to the agenda?

Paul CunninghamMr. Chairman, I move the agenda be adopted as presented.

Tassos McCarthySecond.

James FeatherSo move and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Motion passes unanimously. Next order of business is presentations by the public. On any matter, not calling for a public hearing. We have no public hearings this evening, so this is the opportunity if anyone would like to address the Planning Commission to do so. Is there anyone who would like to speak to us at this time? Seeing none, we will move on. Next item of business is consideration of the May 11, 2026 meeting minutes. those as well were issued ahead of the meeting as required. Are there any changes, comments, or corrections to those?

Kirsten LockhartMr. Chair, I move that the commission adopt the May 11th, 2026 regular meeting minutes as issued. It's

James Featherbeen moved and seconded to adopt the minutes as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain?

Speaker 12Pass it unanimously.

James FeatherThe next item of business is an item that does not require a public hearing. It's a motion to amend chapter 110 of the code of the city of Fairfax, Virginia, which is the zoning ordinance. Mr. Napty.

Paul NaptystaffThank you, Chair Feather. This motion is to initiate amendments to the zoning ordinance related to accessory dwelling units. This is a topic that has been under discussion for quite some time. Planning Commission City Council have both held multiple work sessions on this and staff is now prepared to present final recommendations to the Planning Commission by initiating these amendments tonight then staff will be able to return to you at your next meeting on June 22nd for a public hearing and provide a full staff report at that time.

James FeatherAre there any questions for staff? If not I'll entertain a motion.

Kirsten LockhartMS. Mr. Chair, I move that in accordance with good zoning practice and in support of the public interest and general welfare that the City of Fairfax Planning Commission initiate amendments to Chapter 110 of the Code of the City of Fairfax, Virginia as part of the regular review and maintenance of the zoning ordinance, articles, and sections contained therein, including but not limited to introductory provisions, zoning districts, and regulations, and definitions. And I further move that a public hearing be scheduled for consideration of these amendments.

James FeatherSecond. Seconded. Any further questions or discussions? If not, all in favor say aye. Aye.

Speaker 12Opposed?

James FeatherAbstentions? Motion

Speaker 4passes unanimously.

James FeatherOkay, we will recess our, we have no public hearings, as I mentioned, we'll recess our regular meeting and go into our work sessions. We have two items this evening. The first is a post-submission work session to receive feedback from the Planning Commission on a proposed zoning map amendment for rezoning, a special use permit, special exceptions, and a major certificate of appropriateness for property located at 4085 to 4117 Chainbridge Road. Welcome, Mr. Frederick. Thank you for being here.

Fred FrederickstaffGood evening, everyone. this is a post submission work session for Christopher Lane LLC the applicants submitted a formal application on December 8th 2025 the plans under consideration for tonight's discussion were submitted on April 8th 2026 staff has provided a written staff report and second review comments to the applicants representative the City Council work session is scheduled for July 7th 2026 The applicant has submitted a zoning map amendment from commercial office to commercial urban while retaining the transition overlay district and approval of a general development plan with proffers for three buildings to include up to 392 apartments, up to 29,639 square feet of office, up to 7,747 square feet of retail,

and 637 structured parking spaces and 18 service parking spaces on 3.87 acres in addition to the rezoning request the applicant has requested a special use permit for a multi-family in the commercial urban district and several special exceptions which we'll cover later in the presentation and finally the applicant has submitted a major certificate of appropriateness for The subject site is located between Chambers Road and University Drive across from Fairfax County Judicial Complex to the west, a two-story office building in the activity center place type to the north, a single-family home in the activity center place type to the south, which was approved for up to 276 apartments and office and retail.

that project is known as the Davies property and a three-story townhome community across University Drive and an office building to the east on any activity play center type once again the site is approximately 3.87 acres the small area plan provides more provides for more specific recommendations on issues such as land use open space and transportation they know is providing a comprehensive plan for areas defined as activity centers on the future land use map the recommendations for each plan supersede the general activity place type recommendations as you know this subject property is an old town small area plan in the short term the plan recommends that the existing offices be renovated with new ground level engagement on chambered road consolidation of

consolidation and development into commercial non-residential residential uses are recommended residential uses at this location is not recommended based on the the Old Town small area plan and then finally the existing office market will undergo updates during a medium term but most new development will be concentrated in the Fairfax County judicial complex while it is difficult future the smaller your plan provides some benchmarks for the near-term horizon of the next 15 years so the applicant has provided information towards the near-term development of 15 years so in terms of residential you're looking at up to 392 units the short-term increase would be 12 150 residential residential units office space the smaller your plan would like

to see an increase of 25,000 gross square feet of new office space the applicants is proposing twenty nine thousand six hundred thirty nine square feet of office space and finally the office the applicant is proposing up to seven thousand seven hundred forty square feet of of retail the smaller plan it's looking to increase the amount of retail and the activation of currently vacant retail space within the small area plan the applicant is not proposing any hotels or institutional uses at this time again the current zoning is commercial office and the proposed zoning is commercial urban in the transition overlay district and within a transition overlay district and the CU district upper story residential mixed use is permitted the density

within the TOD is a maximum of 20 general and 24 affordable dwelling units so the applicant has provided density that exceeds this so a special exception would be required in terms of the general development plan the applicant to develop three buildings with up to 394 92 apartments approximately seven thousand seven hundred forty square feet of retail that's approximately 29 thousand six hundred thirty nine square feet of office a east-west private drive of 26 feet in width from University Drive to Chamber Road a north-south greenway between building a and building C connecting to the northern property line the applicant also proposed constructing two levels of parking all three buildings as well as provide service parking for non-residential uses

on Chambers Road the applicant proposes to connect building a and building B on level three over the grid over the private street and a connection between building B and building C on level three over the greenway so just to orientate everyone to the site this is considered building a if you can follow my cursor building a is proposed as 72 units with retail and office on the ground floor fronting chamber droid the remaining areas on the ground floor consists of lobby areas for non-residential and residential uses the second floor is proposed as office space of fourteen thousand six hundred twenty eight square feet of office and then the remaining floors consists of residential apartments the proposed building height for building a is approximately 73 feet

and at six stories building B is fronting along chamber droid you follow my cursor building B is proposed as 154 units approximately 4,342 square feet of office and 6,325 square feet of many amenities space on the ground floor floors the remaining floors would be resident comprised of residential apartments the the building height proposed for building B is approximately that's six stories. Building C fronts along University Drive. Building C is proposed as a standalone residential building of 164 units. The applicant proposes a amenity space fitness center facing University Drive on level four. level 4 level 5 have a step back of approximately 25 feet to 34 feet on University Drive while level 6 has a step back of 135 feet on the north side

of the building and 60 feet on the south side of the building the applicant is proposing the building height of approximately 76 and a half feet for building C and proposed as six stories the applicant proposes a north-south building C the greenway extends to the property line on the east side of building a the greenway is approximately 15 feet in width with a fountain on the north side of the private street in addition to the greenway the applicants provide sidewalks connecting building B and building C and providing pedestrian connections along University Drive and Chambers Road as well as on the south side of the private street the applicant has proposed the private street to be at a width of 26 feet with four parallel

spaces on the north side and three loading zone spaces on the south side in between building B and the Greenway so here's a slide that shows the pedestrian sorry one second so the building coverage the the building coverage for for the property has a max coverage of 80% the proposed coverage is approximately 54% and the lot coverage the maximum of 90% and the applicants proposing a lot coverage of approximately 85% the applicant has proposed right-of-way dedication which changes the parcel data and calculations so the applicant will need to update the information to provide the revised building coverage and lot coverage for for the site slide shows the pedestrian access which I described earlier so

Chambers Road a university on the south side of the private street and between building a and the private street connecting to the greenway again the greenway is approximately 15 feet of paved surface however the area varies in width along the greenway and then the vehicle access is provided through a private street running running east-west right in right out on University Drive the applicant is proposing surface some surface parking but the primary parking location is with a structured parking underneath the buildings there's two levels the entrance from unit from the chamber droid excuse me from the private street into building C leads to the upper level access from University extends into the lower level there are three loading

sit loading spaces provided and the applicant has provided a trash dumpster access from University so

Speaker 4here's a look at the lower level parking garage

Fred Frederickstaffand the access provided from University and here's a look at the upper level parking garage from the private street the applicant is required to have a tree canopy of 10% the applicants providing approximately 10.7 percent that that number will need to be adjusted just like the based on the right-of-way dedication so all the calculations will be would need to be adjusted with the next submission the applicant is providing five canopy trees along University Drive and 10 canopy trees along Cambridge Road the applicant is required to have a special use permit for building C which is a standalone multifamily building what multifamily required special use permit in the CU district the applicant has provided a number of as requested a number of special

exceptions and I'll try to quickly walk through those special exceptions the first one is 75% of the ground floor for building B the applicant has proposed retail and office for building B however the end the applicant has not reached the 75% of the ground floor for non-residential uses so the applicant wouldn't need the special exception in terms of the density for the overall project the density and the commercial urban is max at 24 the applicant is exceeding that density and the density is approximately 101 dwelling units per acre so in terms of building height the applicant is exceeding the building height requirement for cu and the tod or within the tod that's capped at 48 feet the next slide will actually give a visual of that of that building height

and the applicant request to exceed on the building height in terms of the requirement for a landscape strip and street trees along the access drive here's a location for that special exception so on the north side and the south side the applicant has provided a future access easement proposed on the on the north side front and front of building C the applicant would is required to provide vehicular access to non residential properties so on the screen you'll see a red line on the south side of the property and also on the northern side of the property and the the eastern side of the property the office building that fronts on University. And the last exception for this slide is for the northern side.

So in blue, you'll see the requirement to eliminate the sidewalk on the northern side of the proposed access drive. So this exception applies to the height. So the applicant is limited to 48 feet. the applicant is proposing six stories and a max of 76 feet second 76 and a half feet and just should mention that the small area plan recommends that the site be limited to four stories along University and five stories along Chambers Road the applicant has provided some renderings to show the proposed architecture and so this is a view looking from the southeast along Chamber Road view looking to the northeast from Chamber Road view looking on the southeast along Chamber Road another view looking on University Drive and the

private street that's proposed looking to the southwest view looking to the Drive I view looking to the north west along University and also the private street to be constructed by others which is on the Davies property and outstanding issues the outstanding issues are in your packet and the applicant will address these issues with their presentation the next steps the review I will meet to discuss the proposed architecture on June 17th City Council has a work session for July 7th after that the applicant would provide resubmitted plans and support documentation prior to any public hearings this the applicant will come back before planning Commission and a public hearing the BAR has a public hearing and the City Council would have

final hearing for this application and that concludes my presentation I'll stand by for any questions you have any applicant would have a small short presentation before

James Featherwe go there are there any pressing questions for staff shall

Speaker 12we move to the

James Featherapplicant

Speaker 12okay welcome good evening mr. chairman thank Thank you for the opportunity to present. Members of the Commission appreciate a chance to introduce our team and just to give a follow-up to a very thorough presentation made by Fred. I will try to be very efficient because Fred covered a lot, which I was going to cover. This evening I'm joined by the applicant, John Regan, who is going to be running the PowerPoint for me and providing input on an as-needed basis with Christopher Companies. Ken Dondero with the Tetra Corp is here with our team. Tom King, very important member of our team. He is the architect with Devereaux and Associates. And then Dan Van Pelt on short notice. Thank you, Dan, for showing up with

Grove Slate. So in case you have any transportation questions, Dan is here to answer those as well. Let's go to the next slide, please. Just real briefly, obviously, this gives you just kind of a context of our site in relationship to Judicial Center across the street. And then adjacent to us is the Davies property, which was approved not that long ago. And we've done a fair amount of coordination with that applicant on that property. Since we interface with them we thought it was important obviously to make sure that our site works with Davies or without Davies it is a question mark of who's going first next slide please so we were last in front of the Commission where we presented an application what for an assemblage of parcels of all the

parcels that are on the screen except for partial parcel 4117 which is on the That particular parcel was identified by this group as well as by others to be considered to be added to our project. John and his team spent a fair amount of time negotiating with that property owner. And fortunately, they came to terms and we were able to add it to our application. And so it's probably one of the major differences between what you had previously seen and now. I think what's also important, which I really want to point out, is because we hear so much about heights with regard to the application, is one of the challenges is the vertical elevation difference between Chainbridge Road and University. And as pointed out on the top right corner, it's about 26 vertical feet elevation change.

we need to figure that out Tom's done a splendid job of working the building so that everything works and I just wanted again to point that out as we proceed in the discussion next slide this is a slide that Fred did a great job of explaining I'm not going to dive back into here he's already shared with you the intensity associated with the proposed development the density of units and so on and so forth the one thing I will share with you though is was at 395 units previously. We ended up, for reasons associated with height, reduced that to 392. I'll explain that shortly. Next slide. So I've put this slide in a couple of different presentations. And when I look at it, I keep telling myself I need to go to the optometrist because I can't read it.

You can read it when it's on a 24 by 36. so finally I got smart and we went to the next slide okay

Paul Cunninghamso

Speaker 12let's go one back yeah let's go to that one first this is the cross-section of the building that shows its height as it relates to chain bridge road and so wanted to make sure that we really looked at this carefully in terms of what the proposal is along that side of the roadway and as pointed out by fred we are six stories and that six stories reaches a roof deck elevation of 516.6 and i share that because when you look at davies the roof elevation on davies application is 512.6 and we kind of discovered that kind of accidentally you know what there's a four foot vertical change between our site and their site so when you're kind of comparing ultimately in your mind because you can't obviously see it now there's only going to be about a four

foot elevation Delta we're a tad higher but I thought that that was important to recognize and then also in fairness and full disclosure the top of the highest structure that's out there today on top of the penthouse elevation is 507.4 so vertical feet higher in our ultimate development. Okay, let's go to the university drive side. Next slide, please.

Paul CunninghamThat's it.

Speaker 12Thank you. Okay, so we'll study this one a little bit more. Again, the top elevation at the six-story portion. John, you want to just... Nope, nope. Go back to the cross-section if you would. Sorry.

James FeatherYeah, that's my fault.

Speaker 12so if you see where the text building C is right where John's identifying to the left at the very top there that's keep going to the left right at the top of the highest part of our building that matches the elevation that is on the Cambridge roadside so then we gone through several iterations about how do we soften this side as we draw closer to University Drive we need to get down to four stories. Tom and his team and John, through his leadership and guidance, worked several different iterations. And I will tell you that the building proposal was a little bit different early on in our process when we had initially submitted. We did have a unit, and John if you want to point out where we had the additional unit underneath the text building. See

That used to be a unit right there where John's pointing now. And through, again, good comments from staff and through the creativity of our team, we were able to make modifications such that the building drops down to five stories in the area that John's pointing out. Now, as you get closer to Chain Bridge Road, it drops down to a four-story building with a fitness facility over top. an elevation here shortly but I think that what's important and we'll work real closely with staff because this is still a question that we need to make sure that staff and the applicant team are on the same page is is how does that building reduce or step down and in what is the dimensions that it steps down in

and so one of the things I want to clearly identify on this slide is if you look at the building face as it relates to University Drive and then you look at the distance from that point over to where we have the six story it's 60 feet

Paul Cunninghampoint that out John

Speaker 4right

Speaker 12there thank you okay so that's 60 feet to the building face I think what's also important I think when I do this application again how much farther is it to the face of curve that's associated University Drive we're building kind of sits not parallel to University Drive but on a kind of a skewed type condition so the distance from the curb face to the building face at its closest point is about 20 feet and at its furthest point kind of closer to the Davies side it's 55 feet so on average we are roughly 35 feet from the face of curb to the building face another 60 feet to the point where you get to the six story. So we're approximately almost 100 feet from the face of curb to where the six story portion

of the building starts. You're going to be able to see that a little bit more clearly now on the next slide. John, if you want to go to that one, please.

Speaker 4Yep,

Speaker 12thank you. So this is an updated illustrative. we had the benefit or the opportunity to provide an updated rendering Fred did not have this available to him so his rendering was from what we previously submitted this is kind of the latest if you will and this is what we're going to be presenting to the BAR this is a view taken from University looking back at our building and you're looking at the four-story section right behind that just want to point out where the fitness center is that fitness center is on top of the residential units it stepped back slightly and then behind that fitness center again is where you start getting into the residential units but wanted to again make sure that folks kind of look at it from an elevation standpoint and

then the next two slides just kind of take you in a kind of a counterclockwise manner in terms of just showing you what that looks like. And one of the things that we owe credit to the Breckenridge community is they gave us really very insightful feedback as we went through a meeting with them. One of the things that they were strongly communicating to us is that they really wanted the building to look more residential. We still need to meet with them after we meet with the BAR again, but nonetheless, this previously submitted where we've tried to incorporate some more residential components to to try to help address some of the concerns raised

Paul Cunninghamby Breckenridge

Speaker 12all right in this view again this is on the other side of University Drive just kind of looking back and looking at how that building works in terms of its step back since we're looking at building elevations I will just bring you to the front of the site on chain bridge Road and those are similar to what you've already seen from Fred's presentation I won't spend much time there but that's how the building looks based on the latest submission for purposes of the BAR all right my presentation is mainly focused on the issues that were identified as outstanding so we're going to switch over to the greenway not that there was that much of a of an issue raised by staff but nonetheless I think just that folks understand with regard to staff's request that we really try to

incorporate a little bit more in terms of furnishings and things of that nature to make this an inviting place we're really excited about what we're bringing forth when it comes to the Greenway some of the illustrious that we'll show you shortly kind of zoom in and show this a little bit better than this does but well I have this slide up what I wanted to provide is just a comparison our when you take a look at the area that's associated with the Greenway, just the Greenway itself is approximately 23,000 square feet in size. There are other areas that are located outside the Greenway, which are about 9,100 to 9,200 square feet in size, so a total of about 32,000 square feet. The reason I put that out there is that when I compare it

to what Davies has with regard to their Greenway, square feet so nine thousand nine nine thousand one hundred or so it just kind of gives you a comparison to understand the amount of open space associated with this development versus the Davies the next slide is shows you a little bit more character images one of the things and it's really kind of hard to see but on the bottom left side element number four or character image number four shows you a kind of a seating condition that we're going to have throughout the Greenway. And again, I think this was something that staff had pointed out that they suggested that we provide a little bit more of. And we heard them, and we're going to do that. And so we'll work with staff to better point that out as we follow up with them as we continue in the process.

The next two slides, I'm really pretty excited about how the Greenway looks. this is looking north and I'm kind of hard to see but if you look at the perspective arrows on the bottom right corner you can kind of see the angle in terms of what we're looking at but this starts to show you how vibrant this is going to be and it shows you the view of not only the Greenway which is on the right side of the page but also kind of our plaza area if you will where we're going to have outdoor seating for a really nice restaurant that's going to be in the bottom floor of of the building the next slide is slide that we recently made changes to again consistent with recommendations from staff they suggest to get more seating in that greenway if you if you note that

fountain now has seating if you looked at an earlier picture we did not have So it's gonna be a neat place. This view is again taken from the other side looking back gives you again feel and flavor for The Greenway and we're really excited about it Moving on with regard to some outstanding conditions again, we'll work closely with Fred and his team Identification that there were some inconsistencies between the GDP and the architectural materials We hope that we've cleaned that up with our most recent BAR submission. However, we'll continue to work closely and make sure our staff is satisfied with both documents. Staff identified that the density needed to be recalculated to take out the proposed right-of-way for the roadways,

and we've done that. So we'll get with staff and show them the math on this, but the density went from 101.3 when you take out the area associated with the proposed right-of-way. We go to 103.8, slight change. It's about the same density numbers as what you saw previously in the Davies application. Lot coverage, it turns out the lot coverage mathematically works out to be about the same because you take out imperviousness when you take out the right-of-way. you also reduce the area so the math such that the lot coverage is still 85.3 and then with regard to building coverage our building coverage did go up slightly from 50 from 54.3 to 55.6 moving on staff had an excellent comment with regard to turning movements we'll work closely with staff to make sure

that we've demonstrated that the turning movements work and again that will be a an exercise that will get resolved with staff next comment talks about pedestrian connections this slide represents in blue the pedestrian connections proposed with this application we've tried to maximize that at the same time we tried to balance it with proposed landscaping so as what was pointed out by Fred in the presentation we are asking for a waiver of the sidewalk along the north side of our proposed private roadway as it interfaces with the what I call the holdout parcel we did try to get that parcel in our assemblage but unfortunately they were not interested so when if and when they develop we've got easements in place for them to provide

connections both to the greenway as well as to our private roadway and again that something that we kind of worked out with staff but nonetheless we are proposing to put trees in there so that again try to achieve a little bit of a balance between the landscaping aspect of it as well as the pedestrian connectivity and I think that with regard to the sidewalk on Davies there There was a discussion with some members in the citizens community that perhaps we'd look at doing a sidewalk just north of the roadway that Davies is going to build. We really went back and forth on that as a team, and we felt that because we really didn't have any connection points along that side of the building that really functioned as

a primary connection point, other than the bottom right-hand corner where we are building a sidewalk, and John, if you point that out, please. and then Davies they're building a sidewalk where their building is where they have all their entrances we felt like you know what from a balance standpoint landscaping seemed to make more sense there so we'll still work with staff but that was kind of our thought process next slide john coming to an end we'll continue to work with staff to solve make sure they're comfortable with our proposed site distance analyses sanitary sewer this is a comment raised with regard to utility capacity associated with the sanitary sewer system that we're tying into. Per their request, we've done a comprehensive detailed analysis to model really what the capacity of that sewer system is.

And what we have found is that there is a sewer pipe that the city is requesting that we replace. We have found that that sewer is only at 80% capacity at ultimate build-out. That's just not for our proposed building. But when the adjacent building, the holdout property that I pointed out to you, as well as another building across the street, develop in their ultimate state, there's still 20% capacity left in that pipe. So we've communicated that back to staff. I think they're still pushing for the pipe. But nonetheless, we felt like that was important to put out there, and we'll continue to work with staff on that matter. And then lastly, just to let folks know here on the commission, we did go through a community outreach process.

We sent out invitations to Breckenridge, Chancery Square, Courthouse Square, Crestmont, and Mayfair. And interestingly, only Breckenridge responded. So we definitely engaged with them, actually in this room, and had a very productive discussion with them. meeting with their HOA board here after we meet with the BAR as well. But we did meet with them in March, at the end of March. And then we had a separate meeting not that long ago with the Fairfax Citizens and Smarter Growth Committee. Had a very productive session with them. Showed them a lot of the same slides that I shared with you. With that, that concludes my presentation. I'm very grateful again for the time. and we are here to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much.

James FeatherCommissioners, questions, comments? Mr. McCarthy.

Tassos McCarthyHey, thank you. I wanted to talk about the transportation study, and I have one specific question. It applied to the 15% TDM and mode split, and then I think 10% internal capture reduction. Being a resident here, the traffic is a problem and the parking's always been a problem. So I just wanted to see, you know, what empirical evidence, if any, you use to come to that. Because, you know, if you cut those down by half, what kind of implications would they have? So thank you.

Dan Van PeltapplicantGood evening. So I'm Dan Van Pelt with Grove Slade. Nice to be here with you this evening. So I think when we started our transportation study, one of the things we do is we go through and we work with staff at what those assumptions want to be in terms of the modal split reductions and i think given the what this afforded the site with the transportation in terms of the metro and different bus access 15 is kind of actually still pretty conservative assumption from the standpoint of what the data tells us we probably would expect uh it actually in reality probably be a little bit lower a little bit higher than that in terms of the non-auto trips. Traffic engineers, we have a tendency to be pretty conservative. So we usually err towards vehicular trips over transit trips.

And then the 10% is really just to account for the synergies that happen of the uses on the site. We always expect when you have a mixed-use site that there's going to be some level of that sort of synergy that's going to reduce trips and then you're going to be that capture internal to the site. So 10% is actually, again, kind of a conservative low number, but that's what we So hopefully that helped answer your question.

Tassos McCarthyYes, it does. And can I ask, did you stress test it at all to see where it no longer worked?

Dan Van PeltapplicantWell, I can tell you one of the things that we don't do very often is go back and look at our assumptions in terms of what the trip generation is. We don't do a lot of the after-fact study, but when we do monitor, what we usually find is what I just explained to you earlier, is it's usually we've been too conservative on the vehicular side. And what we don't want to do is that we're trying to think about how do we right-size network is is that if we're too conservative on the vehicular side then we over design for vehicles and that sometimes can come at the detriment to our pedestrians and our bus cyclists and our bus users so we're trying to we're trying to strike a right balance there but usually we find that if anything we

have overestimated vehicular trips still thank

Tassos McCarthyyou and I have one more I don't know if it's for you but just in general transportation in one of the drawings I saw it looked like there was a loading area on building C right how how do you intend to service building a from a trash truck you know where are they going I don't see a ton of space for that

Speaker 12either you or Tom can can take it on with it there's been a lot of analysis with regard to that and it's changed a few times and so I'm going to go ahead and let Tom Quink Tom King our architect address that question so

Tom Kingapplicantbecause the garage extends under all three buildings continuously there's there's a trash chute and a trash room under underneath each building in the lower garage level the trash will be you know deposited into containers in each of those trash rooms then they'll be transported to pickup area that's designated on building C next to where the trash truck pulls in. So the full containers would be set in that room and then when the trash men come, they wheel them out, load them, and there are obviously extra trash containers so they're just replacing them under the building and they move them through.

Speaker 4I think to expand on that, when we talked about this design, we really didn't want to front, you know, debris or trash to be brought across that whole entire plaza area. So we wanted to go downstairs and get out through the garage.

Tassos McCarthyOkay, so I

Dan Van Peltapplicantthink that's

Tassos McCarthya great

Dan Van Peltapplicantanswer.

Tassos McCarthyAnd then if I recall, there's residential above A2? Correct. So is there any, are you just going to mark off some spaces for move-ins? How, will they do the same caravan underneath into a freight elevator?

Tom KingapplicantYes. I mean there's a loading area and a surface loading area with three spaces between B and C. Right here. No, there you go north a little bit John. Right here the

Tassos McCarthyGreenway?

Tom KingapplicantYes, adjacent to the Greenway, correct. Yeah, so it's centrally located to be able to load to all three buildings.

Tassos McCarthyOkay. Thank you.

Speaker 6others should we keep going on traffic yeah please while we have a few questions um so my first one's about university drive which is where i live and specifically i live on the north side you know north of old town and i've got some concerns about this east west private road dumping a lot of traffic onto university which you know per the small area plan is supposed to low-volume low-speed bike friendly I can tell you it's none of those things right now and I think this is going to exacerbate that problem because University I think as I'm reading it is full access so you can go left or right whereas chain bridge is right in right out

Dan Van Peltapplicantthat's correct

Speaker 6so for the people coming home at night office 66 they're not going to want to go straight on to 123 because it's a nightmare if you've ever gone that way so you turn left on Fairfax Boulevard go down University Drive and then likewise as you're going north it seems like this opens up the opportunity to cut through this private road so I guess did you look specifically University Drive and the impacts that this road is going to have on that traffic

Dan Van Peltapplicantwe certainly did I mean I think our study area included intersections on University Drive along with Cambridge Road and we looked at those volumes I think one of the things that we need to think about here and is is that we have existing productive uses on the site today their office uses but they're generating trips today in the future with the residential we're going to have very similar number of trips now the pattern is going to change a little bit right so it's different the the commuting patterns all different it's coming home versus going to work and vice versa but what we did is we looked at how those that that traffic currently loads the network we took it off the what that's currently coming in on the

site and then we looked at with the new uses on the site how will that use the right in right out how will they use the full access on University and actually what we found is is that the the Delta and the trips it really didn't show any significant real change in the way the intersections would operate so I think that has really to do that there are there is traffic on the network already from the site today that is going to go away again patterns changed slightly but it's still there's volume on the roadway network today that's using the capacity And we're in some ways just replacing that with new development.

Speaker 6But I guess my question is on allocation. I think a lot of those entry points right now are off of Chainbridge. And this is going to reallocate a lot of that to university.

Dan Van PeltapplicantYeah, I think

Speaker 6that – And university is specifically designed in the small area plan to be low traffic residential, whereas 123 is the main north-south artery. So I think it's got a different profile. I'm just curious. What is going to be the impact on university, I guess, just to put it bluntly?

Dan Van PeltapplicantYeah, and I think that – great question to understand that I think what we again what we found and I think the majority or a number of trips is biased towards university because of the way the access works yeah

Speaker 4I think the other question that I'd say reiterate 4117 the BB&T building has access on 123 I think by putting our road in it now gives the ability to be more get more people to use 123 the way this does our design is being designed to do so it will relieve right now those four buildings are using that the University Drive parking lot more than than really 123 so now you're if you're going to go to work and as you said going home but leaving good to go to work you're going to get on 123 so at least have more let's say morning traffic is going to start going on 123 okay

Speaker 6and then just more broadly beyond university how is the south street extension factored into this is this all modeled off of that because there's going to be a new light there right which will like if i'm sitting at that light going north i imagine with traffic we have the queues are going to back up to this east-west private drive like was how does that get factored into your traffic study

Dan Van Peltapplicantso when When we scoped the transportation study, what was communicated to us is I think we're looking at 2031 is about when the South Street extension is supposed to go in. The build year that is assumed for this project is 2029. So we do not have the South Street extension in our transportation modeling because we don't believe that it's going to be in place. Certainly later when that comes online, that would be a way to relieve traffic and create more connectivity in the area. build horizon for this project

Speaker 6okay thank you those are all my traffic questions

James Featheryou get other questions

Dan Van Peltapplicantwe're

Paul Cunninghamnot limited

James Featherto a particular topic all

Speaker 6right maybe we just stay on that road for a second all right the east-west and let me pull my notes I'm just trying to figure out like conceptually what is it supposed to be because you know from how you've oriented the garage and the retail The loading and all that stuff it feels like a main street But it's been drawn as almost like just a fire lane with the minimum, you know 26 foot wide And again, I mentioned that now it presents a cut-through opportunity between University and Chainbridge Which I think is different from Davies where both sides were right in right out So what is that street supposed to be is it a main street serving those buildings? And if so should it be designed that way as opposed to an alley and

You know, it's a lead into the sidewalk question and stuff like that.

Speaker 12Well, we certainly designed it as our main street. This is our access in terms of being able to bring people from Cambridge to university or vice versa and to bring them into the development. There is an access directly off of university, and John, you can point that out, which gets into the lower level of our garage. but we want to be able to have the opportunity for obviously loading trucks to get to the central portion of our site which is where those four spaces are john if you want to point or three spaces if you want to point those out again are loading and then one of the things that we really feel strongly about is to we want obviously everybody wants the should the application be a successful project for that restaurant to stay in place for that office

building to be full of people for there to be an opportunity if there's an Amazon driver coming by and he needs to drop something off we've got the front plaza area there that's set up to have some parking spaces although obviously predominant overwhelming majority is in our garages but we wanted some accessibility there directly adjacent to our retail area. And that is something which, again, was kind of a balance. Obviously, we need to have pedestrian access. We've done that certainly with the Greenway. But we need to be able to connect Cambridge to university. And, you know, that's something which we talked quite a bit about as we went through the earlier processes in terms of coordination efforts and so forth with town officials, with city officials, that is,

to bring forth an application that's going to meet the comp plan requirements, going to be able to function, it's going to be able to allow this development to be sustaining and to be vibrant. And so we had to strike that balance, and we made sure that the roadway width was wide enough in order to accommodate that type of profile that I just described to you. So that's kind of a quick description of how we came about with regards to the layout. But it was important, again, to have connectivity between Chainbridge Road and University Drive, and the fire marshal felt strongly about that too.

Speaker 6So maybe you can educate me on that, because when I look at the small area plan, this driveway doesn't exist, the greenway. seems to go north-south through this entire parcel down to where the shared road is with the Davies property so I guess was this something that the city requested be added or was this a design that you guys came up with and

Speaker 12well again we tried to be smart from the very beginning if you want to call it that in terms of just trying to solicit as much feedback as we could certainly from the city from transportation experts what makes sense in terms of architecture for the building what makes sense for the viability of the proposed development bar Marshall was important that we had connectivity between Cambridge Road and University Drive and so collectively for all those reasons and the site just works better when you have you know connectivity obviously there's a requirement when it talks about making you know connections to abutting properties to non-residential properties well we're providing connectivity between Cambridge and between universities so that was something

which I think is in line with the spirit of the connectivity provisions within the ordinance and so for all those reasons it's the reason why we came up

James Featherinterject yeah these office buildings were in the small area plan were just expected to remain as they are right and the reason we're seeing this now is because this we have a redevelopment proposal so i

Speaker 6know it's just it seems the greenway is the main focus of this and this breaks it up you know now i'm crossing two crosswalks just to walk the greenway makes it feel less like a greenway not Not to mention I've got a loading dock right next to it and an auto park right next to it. So, you know, like the balance with the pedestrian and the traffic, not to mention this is labeled as an alley. I think there's a sign that says no cut through. So the connectivity is just for the residents. Like this would not be designed as a street that the public should be passing down, correct?

Speaker 12Chair Greg Musil, You said that we labeled it as an alley? Dr. Joe Sopcich,

Speaker 6Yeah. I think that's what the proffer calls it.

Speaker 12Chair Greg Musil, Okay. Well, the idea

Speaker 6is that there would

Speaker 12be a public ingress egress easement on that. Okay. So alley perhaps is not the right term if that's the way we reference

Speaker 6it. Well, that's why I was getting confused as to what is it, you know, supposed to be. It's a private road. Is it an alley or is

Dan Van Peltapplicantit an actual street?

Speaker 12It's a private road. Okay.

Speaker 6Yeah. So maybe just take a look at that. Okay. And if there's improvements that could be made on width and sidewalks. But I'll yield the floor to my colleagues because I've taken up too much time. No worries. Thank you.

Matthew RiceMr. Rice. Good. Good. Excellent questions from my colleague. and I think when we hear those questions it raises new questions from us I think if anyone from your team was present during discussion about the Davies proposal it should be relatively clear that we were not altogether happy with several elements of that proposal the one thing that was frustrating to no end was their initial presentation where they presented the greenway is essentially a convenient place to pull their dumpsters from this storage that was right along the greenway through to their street so they could be picked up so they were thinking of the greenway as having a function related to their trash and their recycling and that

absolutely misses the entire purpose of the greenway and so uh the extent to which uh the functionalities of loading, unloading, and so forth, either adjacent to the greenway or pertinent to the buildings and their function, those things need to be separated a bit. The entire small area plan for this area does feature that greenway. Its intention is to pull people out of their cars, activate the neighborhood, present a place for people to walk, for people to interact, and to congregate in

Speaker 4certain places. Totally agree, 100%.

Matthew RiceYeah, your treatment of the Greenway in terms of a fountain and places to sit is light years ahead of where we started with the Davies proposal. I am happy to see an effort made in that regard. I want to echo the comments of the smart growth review of this and suggest the four parking spaces in the lot adjacent to the fountain Be removed to create additional open space and places for the public to congregate You would still have 10 spaces remaining in that lot There's additional parking underneath I think adding additional green space would be very helpful, especially with a lack of Along that interior roadway having those roadways at the absolute functional minimum is problematic I do know from

discussions with the fire marshal and folks in the fire department that It's very common for them to encounter that delivery driver stopping on the roadway for convenience You do have the three loading spaces off the road adjacent to building B. That's fine. That's a great idea. But people are going to stop their vehicles in the roadway. They're going to park there. And having a roadway that's already so narrow that you can accommodate the foam engine, the ladder truck, EMS, you're not going to be able to accommodate those vehicles coming through and responding to an emergency when you have drivers on the roadway. I don't expect you at this point to be thinking of how to police parking along your interior private road, but having it that narrow does create a problem.

I want to just maybe shift a little bit. There may be a response to some of the things I've mentioned, but the sidewalk on the south side, this is something that we envisioned, terribly unfair for us to have a proposal approved that places contingencies on a developer next door and just expecting them to you know to fix the problem created by the development that was approved and I'm sorry we tried to push as hard as we could to get the roadway on the south side and Davies property to have to have a better width and sidewalks and I a sidewalk does need to be placed there and I know that several people have commented on no known this on the very south side

Speaker 4yes

Matthew Riceyes

Speaker 4so

Matthew Riceall the renderings look great but the buildings are pushed right up basically as close as they get it can get to the to the edge the road

Speaker 12is on the property boundary

Matthew Riceyeah so i realize this is a problem caused by approval of a prior project it does seem difficult that we'll have perhaps four or five different east west corridors through the very center of this area And my colleagues already pointed out this sort of renderings in the small area plan show a nice greenway through the center. But what we really have is what we may end up with is three or four segments of kind of very short greenways connected by larger stretches through parking lots. And that's a shame. Originally, when this was presented as part of a small area plan, the Greenway specifically, it was the sort of feature of this part, the place that would kind of activate public life, that would bring kind of residents and shoppers and people walking up to Main Street out of their cars and into the city.

Is there anything that you think could be done additionally with the plan here to increase the benefit and use of the greenway? Will there be a raised crosswalk, for instance, connecting the two halves of the greenway through the private street?

Speaker 12We've explored how this area may look with regards to some refinements along the lines that you described That's been a comment that we've gotten from multiple parties. That happens to be the widest area presently associated with our green space, which is probably 45 to

James Feather55 feet wide. But

Speaker 12nonetheless, I think that's an area that we can go back and revisit in terms and see what we might be able to do to react to those comments with regards, again, to that portion certainly the race crosswalk that's something we could easily accommodate and we did anticipate that there was going to be a crosswalk in that area how that might ultimately look in terms of its final design I think the raised crosswalk suggestion is a good one and we can explore that

Matthew Ricethere are some places on campus at Mason that have for an organization without any planning oversight and with one person whose half of their job is planning they do have some good pedestrian crossing areas and I think that's more because of the legal liability of not having them but raised crosswalk between Merton Hall on the north side of campus and the rest of that central campus is quite good it's differentially colored it's raised and instinctively drivers slow down for it And then when people just step off the sidewalk, they're already prepared to stop. It's –

Speaker 6for

Matthew Ricea campus with a lot of pedestrian problems, it's quite a good example, and I'd recommend that. The city has several different designs that CDP staff could talk to about. I

Speaker 4think

Matthew Ricewhen

Speaker 4we were designing this, like we had one time coming off Chambers Road, we had a fountain. It was in the – like between building A and B. And they're like, eh, I don't think that's going to work. city staff asked us to go down and look at Crystal City where Amazon's new campus is and look at some of the things they're doing down there in terms of activating we went to a plaza that was just all literally stone, you could literally move a planter and it could be a parking lot if you wanted it to be just to have grass doesn't mean it's going to be activated we really designed this to be outside of this retail outside of the restaurant we're planning this to be a restaurant. This we want to be very active for people to be in there.

The reason why if just to give you an understanding why we left those four parking spaces there because we've seen like the green turtle a lot of stuff that going into retail stuff easy access to retail areas somewhat help to keep by you know the viability and this is very we're trying to make this very very active even though this is a this is at one time the fountain was actually in the middle of this of this area right in here we actually moved it to here we also had it yeah we had it here and we had it here so we've had it in two different locations so we don't want it to be I mean there's places if you've ever been in Georgetown they have the little you know so you know canal there's a lot of greenways

going down through that area and it's between older buildings and stuff like this so we're we're very we do want this to be a very vibrant area where people can hang out I mean that's what this whole this whole that whole area is

Speaker 12planned for and I think one of the last thing and I think this is obvious but one of the challenges obviously is when you're looking at the comp plan as a It's a lot easier to plan it out when you're looking at development on a segmented type basis. It adds a wrinkle that gets more challenging. And so you see these applications as they come in when you're having to deal with development for a finite number of parcels, which is quite a bit less than what was envisioned in the comprehensive plan. And you try to keep an eye on the ultimate, but at the same time you need to make it work with what's around you. And so we're taking that into consideration, trying to deal with that as best we can.

Matthew RiceRight. I think the Breckenridge letter that, you know, looking at this entire thing that was sent widely expresses the frustration that you're perhaps alluding to, that it's very difficult to figure out what parts of the small area plan we're choosing to ignore to allow a developer to come in and do something and which parts are real. And so it's difficult for us to have started with a proposal that fell short in a few areas. And obviously my main focus here is this greenway through the center. We didn't enforce the kind of grading of the greenway through the Davies parcel to really create a functional passageway all the way through. so I don't want you to be burdened with any deficits of any other developers but

I do want this to be the very best that it can be and I think feedback from Breckenridge is quite good the feedback from the small growth smart growth group is excellent having very thoughtful feedback from city residents like this is it's solid gold and I would take that very seriously because we all read it it seriously to get a little more specific and my colleague to my right mentioned the the traffic issues on the university and the problems there I'm I'm real concerned about the left turning traffic northbound left turning traffic into the development people coming from Mason students renting that are coming in that direction and I'm worried that having that center turning lane which doesn't have a huge length there's you know only so many cars that

can stack to do a left turn during the 4 to 7 p.m. hour I'm concerned that that will be a pinch point and will cause problems I certainly would not want to see University be redesigned and lose the bike lanes to provide additional turning space so in terms of that left turn into the private street and also into the entrance on University how will those left turning cars be managed and you'll have additional traffic out of Breckenridge that'll be sort of competing with that I know the level of service for the Breckenridge intersection is it be right now i'm skeptical uh a little bit of the problems on the university because as my colleague did mention it's not intended to be the central thoroughfare through the city

Dan Van Peltapplicantyeah i mean that that the the traffic coming out of the site will have a be stopped controlled so traffic on university will have uh will not be stopped controlled so it'll be able the left turn will make it a left one that has a gap in the southbound traffic. What we're seeing in the capacity analysis is telling us that there really does not appear to be an issue for that left turn. But I guess, could you help me with that?

Matthew RiceYeah, simply the cars that are coming southbound on the university, at the end of the day, any left turns off the university are pausing and yielding for cars. and the ability to turn left through traffic without signalization is going to be quite difficult. You're going to have cars stacking in that center lane. That's going to create additional disruption for the lanes on either side and certainly is going to make it very challenging for cyclists who are trying to use the roadway as well.

Speaker 4But if you're talking about George Mason University, yes, I know when you come out of a campus, going straight ahead is a lot easier. But if you took the right and then took a right on 123, that's a right in to our site. So if you're coming from George Mason, after you're about the third week of living there, you'd probably go, okay, I'm going to come up 123 and

Matthew Ricetake a right in. And it's not just Mason. It's, you know, the residents. No, no, but I mean, they're just saying. There's thousands of residents living on the south edge of the city, which includes me. So I'm concerned about that. Folks are also concerned about traffic on the university. My colleagues mentioned his questions about that, and I think at least studying that in detail and having great answers for those might be quite useful. I'm going to leave it there. I'm not going to go to stormwater and sewer. I know those are covered and that you've provided an answer for those as well. We do need to make sure that we have ample capacity for what we're doing in the city Being at 80%, it sounds like, well, shoot, we've got another 20%.

That actually sounds like a difficult situation. If we're at 80% capacity, that's potentially problematic. But I'll leave additional questions for my colleagues. Thank you. Ms. Lockhart.

Kirsten LockhartThank you, Chair Feather. So I'd like to go in a slightly different direction about layout of retail and commercial and utilization. Are these intended to be single parcel or single lease facilities as drawn, or is it just sort of labeled blankly office and commercial and could be subdivided?

Speaker 4It could be. I mean, any of the areas in red here. Because

Kirsten Lockhartit looks like two retail, one office. We'll

Speaker 4put demisey walls in depending on what

Kirsten Lockhartwe're

Speaker 4renting it to. I mean, I know at one time there was a Bales bondsman that was in the building. Currently, one of the buildings has the public defender's office in it. One of the buildings has, you know, CASA in it. So we're hoping that they come back, you know, they'll have to move out while we're building it. We want them to move back in.

Kirsten LockhartSo you're good. You've got the second part of my question, which was could you speak to the current configuration, classification, and utilization of that office space? As you pointed out, it seems like perhaps not the most tenants that are most rolling in dough for upgraded office space. If the intent is to come back with Class A office space, that probably is not a match to the current tenants for this space. Would that be correct?

Speaker 4I would say that there would be a slight rent increase, yes. I would say the buildings right now would be classified probably B minus of C plus. Sure. at

Paul Cunninghambest.

Speaker 4So they're currently renting, I think some of them are at $25 a foot. So they would definitely be in that category. So I would say that there would be an increase of rent.

Kirsten LockhartSure. So even putting aside sort of the state of them, because I'm sure they could all require an upgrade, I do feel like Fairfax City has a preponderance of small office space. And that's actually a selling point on renting in the city is people who are looking for those more manageable places without sort of, you know, renting a shingle in Tyson's Corner. Do you feel like this configuration can support that, or would your preference be for larger tenants?

Speaker 4Currently, all four of those buildings are handling small law firms and land or title companies, and I would want that to be the same place. We're not looking to, hey, whole entire building for rent. It is for the people who live there.

Kirsten LockhartOkay. Was ownership of units ever considered, or did you all go straight to rental apartments? Like, was a condo model ever considered? Condos

Speaker 4in this day and age, the size of this project would not be conducive to being able to be bankable

Kirsten Lockhartor

Speaker 4even financed.

Kirsten LockhartOkay. Given that, maybe this is a question for Mr. Harden, we haven't seen any movement on the Davies property in almost a year. So are projects at this scale in this location economically viable in, you know, real lengths of time?

Speaker 4I don't know. I don't know. I'm not running their project. Sure. But, I mean, we're planning on, if this gets approved, to move forward as a – we do have a lender and we do have an investor that will be able to fund this project.

Kirsten LockhartOkay. And then in terms of going back to the Breckenridge letter and sort of the upcoming meeting with the Board of Architectural Review, is there a narrative that you're planning to propose there that you can share with us in terms of design choices? Because I look at this and I don't necessarily see Fairfax City on the facade. I know you mentioned adding more residential elements, which is appreciated. but in terms of sort of what was asked for by by the neighborhood feedback do you feel like you can speak to that adequately

Speaker 12probably should let the architect respond to that obviously when we met with Breckenridge the theme from them on the university side was they definitely wanted a residential look or element associated with that. So the BAR submission attempts to respond to that particular comment. With regard to Cambridge Road, I mean, the feedback that we got from the Fairfax City Citizens for Smarter Growth was pretty positive. so with regard to the theme I think is the word you used I'm not the right guy for that so I'll let Tom

Speaker 4I think one of the things I'll let Tom talk about it but one of the things that I really drove the original drawings that were done if you look at our original submissions to what it is today I wanted let's say my, you know, great-grandchildren, if you drove by, go, hey, my grandfather designed that building. So this, and we're designing this for, you know, 50 years from now. And we're not, yes, it should be softer when it's down near, you know, on university, because it's against townhouses. But this is the Chamber Ridge Road side of it. It's across the street from the Judicial Center. So if you're going to make it look like the school across the street, the old schoolhouse, then I can put it, I mean, you're trying to give it a little bit of a modern look,

try to match up with what the judicial center's doing, but make it a statement. This should be a statement building for the city of Fairfax, not just a museum, and that's what we're trying to do there.

Kirsten Lockhartjudicial centers the county we don't claim that one we

Speaker 4got we got we got rid of the Massey building let's get to the go for the positive stuff I think it fell down on its own didn't it after you I

Tom Kingapplicantmean I don't have too much more to add we we started with John's direction he you know he prays he told us I want you to be proud of the building we want we don't need to look at building in the city and try and match it. We want to attract retail. We want to attract the office. We want a building that's going to stand out and be, at the same time, be inviting. Obviously, we pulled in various elements for the elevations that are not typical for the city but we feel like they they represent the ideal that John was brought to us about what he was hoping to do I mean I don't I don't really have a whole lot more to add we it was a creative process we this is maybe the six seven there were quite a few and I feel like the the renderings really really

solidified it for us we we had renderings of other iterations again that it wasn't portraying the the retail element and the residential piece above and we do feel like that this is capturing that the ground is is an active space and we have we have our gateways to invite people into the community we're trying to activate the space within the three building assemblage and that that's kind of how we ended up where we were

Speaker 4and just just to reiterate that like for the retail or the restaurant. We really wanted to, at night, we want that to really, when you have the lights on and it's open, we want that to draw people in to, you know, they don't have to drive to it. They can walk to it. You know, that's what we really want this building to be. You can walk across the street to work or walk down the street to work in the city. and we want you to live, you know, live, work, entertain on this complex.

Kirsten LockhartI'm good. Thank you, sir. Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamThank you, Mr. Feather. I appreciate it. I will start by saying thank you very much for pursuing consolidation of the property between what you originally came in with and the Davies property. I think that is a huge step forward as I guess I had termed it the orphan property if it were not going to be left to its own devices in the future. So I think that it expands what you're doing with this to make it much more usable and much more functional. I've got a number of comments as I guess I usually do. One, we're talking traffic and part of what I will observe on traffic is that yes, we're getting much denser. And more traffic is going to be the problem going into the future, so how do you regulate that?

One of the other areas that is somewhat analogous to your cut through street that we dealt with a few years ago and generated a tremendous amount of conversation about cut through traffic, you can't do that, was termed the Moxley, or which is now 50 point. And the idea of expending Bevan Drive from Route 50 down to Route 29 was considered anathema because all that was going to be was cut through traffic through the middle of Camp Washington. And yet with the design that you've got at that particular location as you bring it in from either the north or the south, you've got either direction turning in off of Route 50. You've got right in, right out, off of Route 29. In the middle, you've got a bit of a serpentine road.

You've got a roundabout. And then right on Route 29, you have the same function you have here, which is architecture over the roadway. And I think that tends to make it a tunnel that you're going through or that. And I think that will cut down a lot of cut-through traffic. simply because people aren't comfortable cutting through that kind of a space. They don't know that it's going to save them time. And on a narrow road, it probably won't. So you don't have some of the serpentine, but I think that can be looked at. And that one feature, I think, is a major plus in cutting down cut-through traffic. When South Street is extended through, it will perform perhaps much the same function that Sager Avenue does now.

If you're slow on 123, you cut over on Sager to get to university and go. So that issue is already alive and well. And the question here is how do you connect your development to both streets in a functional way to let people get in and out? And the next question I guess I have in terms of traffic comes back to the discussion that I had. Are my concerns as expressed on Davies? When we look at Davies and where you get in and out of parking on Davies, What they have proposed is commercial on 123, right on the west side of the development. Where do you get to that if you're coming in to go to a restaurant or a shopping center or something along that line? You come off your university drive, you go in about two car lengths, and you turn under the building.

Now you take a serpentine route under the building, changing a level in parking to get up to the west side of the entire building. Now how many, you know, all of you young folks who love to do computer games may find that fun, but I think there are a lot of drivers out there who don't find navigating under buildings to be really that much fun, especially to find something along that line. If you live there, you learn how to do it. run the maze but if you're anything else that becomes a challenge and so when I look at the parking here I believe you've got two entrances one is off University to the lower level and the other is off of the private street to the upper level but both of those are very close to University Drive which

means if I'm going to do anything in the restaurant or the commercial space or anything else in building a how is it laid out to make that maze easier to run for people to figure out how to get from point a to point b with underground parking through congested heavily traveled area that has spaces spaces allocated to various uses that i would think would be something that really could use some extra information because it's going to help anybody who's going to have to use it.

Tom KingapplicantRight. And I grant you, it is a challenge. We have to take advantage of the grade, and where it's low is where we get into the garage. So that unfortunately puts us on the low side near university. Again, you make a good point, though, about why we're trying to keep the parking on the surface. because a lot of that is going to be quick trips. You know, hopefully the people are going to be stopping into the restaurant and they'll know if I go at 5 o'clock, there's plenty of parking on the surface. I'm good there because there are going to be people that aren't comfortable with going in the garage. Although the garage is not the circuitous route that Davies has. It is all on the upper level, But you do have to travel to the back corner of the garage to be able to access the elevator.

Unfortunately, that's just the way it works out with being able to access the garage from the elevation that we need to be at. We don't have a garage layout, I don't believe.

Speaker 4You had it on your presentation. I'm going to flip this out.

James FeatherThere are creative wayfinding indicators that you can use as well to direct people. That's where Davies was

Speaker 12headed. We've had significant discussions in-house about wayfinding, and that's something that we're going to be providing to make sure that these type of issues are being addressed.

Paul CunninghamThat's it. Yeah, there we go. That and getting in. And I think that's an important thing to make as a point of how you're going to do the ease of that. A question I have, you've got the surface parking in front of the building A and your number of spaces. I really appreciate what you've done with the greenway and opening it up so that it could be used by people. for the number of units we've got, I think you're going to probably have 700 people living there. And when you get to Davies, if they don't want to go and use their space, they're going to want to walk through the greenway and use this space. So I think that opens that up for use by residents and use by other people using the restaurants.

Is there a thought or is it possible that at times you could close off that surface parking it up as additional amenity space if people had big parties or things along that line so that it becomes an option that makes it more viable to have parking up there because the space could be used for more than that for special occasions. Good idea. Things that could be used along that line. And that just makes that parking space more functional than saying, oh, it's reserved for all the pizza delivery guys or all the FedEx trucks or all the UPS drivers? And is that centrally located for them to park? And how do they get to the entrance of the buildings to make their deliveries from there? In other words, how much time do you tie up a driver if he's trying to wander around,

secure their roots to get to where he has to go and then come back to his vehicle? Is that central to get into the buildings and do that? Is that designed for ease of use for all of those service people that have to do it?

Tom KingapplicantIt actually is very central for the commercial portions, A and B. We're there near the main entrances to both buildings. The C building is all residential, and so its access, the lowest level, the bottom level of the garage would be residential only, gated with the access off a university. It would only be the commercial parking, and those aren't designated on there. John, can you go to the next? Oops. There we go. And on the BAR set, on this one, it's not. But our garage... garage right there about 35 commercial spaces that are in the web the upper left plan northwest corner that are in this area are the commercial so it's it's basically a turn in a turn right and a turn right and your parking is there and the elevator is right there to be able to access that

And

Speaker 4we can put signage in

Paul Cunninghamthe building

Tom Kingapplicantitself. Most definitely.

Paul CunninghamThat's great. In my history, going around a long time, we used to go to places and shop and buy things and then bring them home. My wife has now learned about a place called Amazon. And all you do is get out the computer and

Speaker 12one package delivered tomorrow.

Paul CunninghamSo a lot of that goes on. And I suspect that younger people find that much more convenient. So Amazon may be loading a truck to come in and throw off a bunch of packages at a time to make it efficient. But that means the Amazon guy has got to be able to get there and have some place to offload those packages for people to pick them up later. Is that a function being designed in?

Tom KingapplicantIt is, yeah. actually on the in the amenity area on building B the blue area on the the south building would have a package room that would collect packages for all of the the three buildings for the residents

Paul Cunninghamand a standard mail room or whatever for standard

Tom Kingapplicantmail room and a package room that it'll be a big room yes we've we've We've tried all the locker storage things and everything, and nobody uses them. They just pile the packages adjacent to it. It's frustrating.

Speaker 4It is. Since the pandemic, I have to say, designing of a multifamily building for packages. We've done the Amazon package thing. Too small. They lay them on the floor. Right now, we're designing them with cubbies, and you're just basically, or whatever and it's just a bunch of you know shelves that people can put stuff on because it's just amazing how much on a multi and especially on something this big the the package room is going to be almost as big as the amenity area

Paul Cunninghamokay the next the next question i have i guess on amenities I see this beautiful swimming pool in the middle of building C. Yes. Is that going to be a year-round amenity, or is that going to be like the one at Davies, the one at the Fairfax Swim Club where we use it in the summer and put it away and hope people don't fall into it during nine months of the year?

Tom KingapplicantI would like to say it's year-round, but I don't think so. Yeah, it will be a seasonal use. I

Speaker 4think one of the things when we're designing this, we're going to try to do is on the top of the buildings is have outdoor areas that we can use on top of the building. Also, on top of where the exercise area is, that's actually going to be the top of that roof. We're thinking they're going to work out there or do something there and actually be on that outside back deck of University Drive. We want a lot of outdoor space that we want to activate on top of these buildings.

Paul CunninghamOkay. I don't know how much real utility the pool is. I know this was a suggestion again with the Moxley at the start and it went away. Have you ever thought of a rooftop restaurant or something along that line as an amenity that you could put up there that people could use?

Speaker 4Don't encourage me.

Paul CunninghamOkay. That question there. Pets. Is this a pet-friendly area? And who walks pets? Because the neighbors across the street are going to walk their pets on any sidewalks you have and open spaces. Is this designed for handling animals the long way to the Davies? Because when we talk sidewalks and the need for the rest of people transiting this area, the one thing I notice when I'm either doing physical therapy in the building that didn't choose to play or that and I'm looking out the windows on these areas that I see a lot of people out walking pets these days I

Tom Kingapplicantwould hope it's a decision it's a decision by the owner but I would I would encourage pets we have the the amenity space to be able to provide the pet wash area the Green way as the perfect access. So, yeah, I would definitely say pets are welcome.

Speaker 12I think my illustratives did have a pet, so they're in there. It's

Paul Cunninghama theoretical dog. Okay. I guess one last, or two last quick points. One, disruptions, major disruptions for a short period of time. that would be handled. One I'm thinking of comes up in about four weeks and it's going to shut down the street on both sides for about half a day. It's called the Fourth of July Parade. And if you think about what the city does in celebrating, it takes a parade from the courthouse all the way down to downtown, back up University, across in front of City Hall and back to the courthouse. So when that parade route is shut down, what do you think happens to access for your tenants?

James FeatherI will add Turkey Trot.

Paul CunninghamYes. Closes down university. And there are things along this line. Are there things that need to be considered to handle those kind of activities?

Speaker 12I'm glad you asked the question. I think that's something we would have to engage with the city on in terms of better understanding what the parade route is. Hopefully the parade's not both on university and Cambridge.

Paul CunninghamIt is a vote. So that's

Speaker 12going to be something that we're going to have to figure out because our site doesn't have any more road connection locations.

Paul CunninghamDavies had the same question. And the more we develop this area, it impacts some of those things that become disruptive for design.

Speaker 12Welcome recommendations, by the way, if you have a

Paul Cunninghamrecommendation. And aside from that, one, historically, downtown has had a lot of red brick from an architectural standpoint. Scout on the Circle doesn't have a lot of red brick. So red brick is partly the identifier from Colonial Williamsburg and that the city had for a history. The question is whether anybody here still remembers back that far and if red brick is still the thing. but it is one of the things that is discussed for many of the developments in the Old Town area. So the more red brick generally in looking at it, I mean, if I looked at this, I would say, hey, that's current development. That is design as it looks today. I would not have seen that built 40 years ago. It would have had a different character.

Or 50 years ago, and I could see the character of what was built then because that's what's coming down. So Red Brick and Architecture Review is part of the history I think we have talked in looking at it. Other than that, I think you've come a long way, and I hope the Greenway mates well with Davies on the grade level, because that has been a big discussion, too. Do we get here and now you can jump down a seven-foot wall and pick up the Greenway going next to it? Yeah,

Speaker 12I had to figure that out. And my colleagues in my Chantilly office did that project. So I made sure that they were connected at the same elevation. But it goes back, though, to the point I was raising earlier in terms of who goes first. We don't know. I mean, we're moving fast and furious, and we'd like to see the development move forward, obviously. and the timing of Davies. I don't think anybody in this room has the answer to that question, but we're going to make it work either way. Okay. Okay.

Paul CunninghamThank you. I appreciate all of the effort that's gone into it. I think this is a step forward, as the small area plan indicates, and as we recognize that redevelopment is going to occur, the question is how many people, how dense, what's it going to do to traffic? Because we're not done with this discussion. Yep. Thank you, sir.

James FeatherWere there others? Ms. Luckart.

Kirsten LockhartMay I raise one sort of concluding question for my colleagues? We didn't talk about height, surprisingly, and that is always a sore subject. Can we do a quick sort of roll call on how we feel

James Featherabout

Kirsten Lockhartthis? We will.

James FeatherWe'll get to my

Kirsten Lockhartcomments. Fair. Fair. Not to usurp.

James FeatherMr. Clark, you may

Kirsten Lockharthave had some more. I just think gut check on this might be interesting before your comments.

Speaker 6I'm happy to hold until you give your piece. Honestly, I'm not too bothered by the height. I did just have a practical question of why do you have to go that high because Davies seemed to get the same density with the less stories. So is there just a practical reason why it had to be six? I'm saying for this one, if Davies would ever get to the same density with less stories.

Speaker 12We have a lot more commercial on our project than they do. One of

Speaker 4the

Speaker 12things that was really important. So that's a big difference. and we needed to carve out space, obviously, to make up for that much non-residential space.

Speaker 6Yeah, because they were zoning from residential to urban, where you guys are going from office to urban. So I think it makes sense that you have more commercial space, given it's actually a big net decrease in what we have today.

Speaker 4City Council was very, when our conversations with council members and some citizens, it was very important that we keep as much office space as possible, especially knowing across the street, as you were discussing earlier, about small offices, a bunch of lawyers and stuff like that, that was important to a lot of city council members. And so that's why we've got a lot more. We've got a whole entire first floor of building A is either retail or office. The second floor of building A is all office. So we're trying to balance both sides of it. And if you look at the Davies versus us, I would think that our compare the two, I don't know if Fred's got this, we've got a lot of, there's a lot more, I would say, usable open space,

it's on top of a parking deck it is you know a lot of open space that can be used

Matthew Riceyeah I think the step back on the university helps and I think having four stories is the limit and with some stepping back is quite helpful we are sort of at five and a half stories on the chambered side and not for a few of buildings with some of the accessories up on the roof but i'm not particularly concerned about the height i think this is in my opinion qualitatively better than the massing of buildings in the davies proposal and we're getting more open space it's not you know the ideal that i have in my mind but it comes uh closer and so the height is a byproduct of that and it doesn't give me any concerns as long as we can work out some of the other smaller issues traffic being one of those

Kirsten Lockharti like the step down onto university and i think that the pool and the fitness center are unique asset that will make this a very attractive rental location. I do feel like the massing on chain bridges is too significant for what I would want to see there. It's not a wide road. It's going to start to feel very claustrophobic if all development kind of pushes the envelope on how high it can build. That would be my concern is the proximity and the height of the chain bridge roadside.

James FeatherOthers at this point?

Tassos McCarthyI'm personally okay with the height, I think. If I could just make one point before I yield, you're asking for a fair amount of exceptions, and I think development is always just about trade-offs, right? And the greenway is a great public benefit, I think. and when I think about the project you've taken a you know parcelized auto dependent lot bringing it together I think there's a lot of good but in my head if you take away that that greenway I don't know if all the ass necessarily meet the public benefit so to his point of like a rooftop restaurant whether or not I'm not you know writing your pro forma for you I get it but if that could just be something that you think you know what what more if anything could be done so again just to meet the trade-offs and

they'll always be people that are upset or you know a townhouse complex complex that is more adversely affected than you know others but it's it's all about the greater good. So I would just ask that you kind of think through that a little bit more and see if there's anything more you can do.

Speaker 4Understood.

James FeatherThank you. A couple of additional things from my perspective. Appreciate all the good comments from my colleagues here. Let me just start with the height. On the university side, I'm actually a little concerned that very superficially it reads four stories from university, but it's a very short step back before it goes tall with the fitness center. I think actually one of the things that was done very well at the Davies property is the way University Drive reads. It's four stories, pretty much full depth of an accommodation unit. That's not what it looks like here. I want to see some bulk plane sort of renderings and so forth to see how it really reads. Breckenridge expressed this concern as well.

I'm not sure it reads the way it should as four stories along a university. It's kind of a superficial nod to it, but I think it's probably still too close to the university drive before it jumps up again with a fairly big, massive glass up there. As far as the Cambridge Roadside, I'm not terribly concerned by either. It doesn't seem to be too different from some of the heights of today's buildings. I think you described some of those. get another shot at this since I'm the Planning Commission rep on the Board of Architectural Review. So when that comes up, you'll see me again. And I'm not going to presume to tell you what the bar will think, but there is incorporation of red brick on your own

initiative. And I think that's a good thing that you'll probably get positive feedback on. One of the things that the bar has talked about in the past is how we mix the ancient and the modern, and there are good ways to do that, many representations of that in Europe, for example, and I think you've made a very good effort. So we'll see how the bar feels about it. I'm pretty favorably impressed with what I've seen so far. I have a little bit of a concern, the idea of the sidewalk, no sidewalk, actually, along the south side of your property, along the street on the other property. We've got the greenway coming through, and it more or less dead ends. to go except across the street. There's no landing zone, no nothing, no connection to university, no connection to Cambridge from

your property. So that concerns me. I think it was our expectation that ultimately there will be sidewalks on both sides of that street. You're not providing one on the north side of your own, a private drive, which is a special request for you. So it'll have to be looked at. But I'm a little concerned about particularly how Greenway more or less dead ends without a safe space except to cross the street, and we have no idea what that crossing is going to look like

Speaker 12at this point. All right.

James FeatherI will echo the concern, the comment of my colleague, Mr. Cunningham, about to congratulate you on the ability to consolidate all the properties but the one, but the most important one was the southernmost property to provide a really cohesive development. I commented early on and just reiterate, when you really look at the small area plan, there was not a concept presented when this was developed six or more years ago to even do anything with those office spaces. But there continues to be concern, as you've indicated, the look of the grade the quality office not not the best of it it could be certainly not the highest and best use of the property in in the city you've brought a very commendable concept I think let's try to meet some of our

housing needs try to preserve some of the office space we're obviously losing office space in the city is a consequence of this which is an all is an ongoing concern anytime we lose commercial property we put more and more and on the city for providing services to residents. Nevertheless, the world's different than it was when the small area plan was put together, and we have to recognize that. And we'll be having our next work session on how we update our small area plans to kind of reflect current reality. But I think directionally this is a good thing. Still some concerns. You've heard them expressed a number of times here. So any other comments?

Speaker 6Can I just ask three quick ones? Please. Sorry. the way i just walked this block the other day this is a huge step up so like despite my questions this is the last major block in old town south so i want to make sure that we have been thorough in our review because it's kind of last crack we're going to get it to making sure the small area plan comes to life on um my one quick question is building c all residential is there a reason for that especially given what you heard from the city around maintaining as much commercial as as possible and given that the parking entrances are right there

Speaker 4we one of the things when we were looking at this the viability of of any retail or office i mean unless i'm renting it to a cpa firm a law firm it's you know you couldn't have you could probably have a cleaners which has chemicals that i don't know if you want to do that there um we just didn't think that would be could could survive okay we're thinking 123 is what's going to give is that's your front door that's what you want it to be and you're talking about traffic if i have retail and in office on you know the university side then i've got traffic that's parking on that end you got a lot of activity on that end so

Speaker 6i think if people are going to access the retail from army i'm saying you think people are going to access the current retail because i've got to go over to that side to get to the garage right to get to the restaurants and whatnot that are in building a you're saying that's all going to come off of chain bridge

Speaker 4hold on um i mean that's this is the interest is the upper parking garage yeah so if you come in on university you'll be coming in this road right here which is above this and you'll be coming down and then you'll be pulling in here going in here and parking and there's a specific elevator that says office and retail so you won't be using the residential elevator it's very specific for that thing plus there that's why one of the reasons why we had parking sitting on on that plaza area was a give keeping people towards 123 yeah I got

James FeatherI'll add in the rate in the Davies development clear guidance pushback and on the part of the residents along University to not put commercial on University things like that so it just doesn't lend itself to that

Speaker 4they did mention that for

Speaker 6sure um just to echo I think a couple of my colleagues comments on the sidewalk and most recently chair feather you said you coordinate a lot with the Davies folks I think at the Jane one of the January City Council meetings they had said that you guys were gonna build the sidewalk on the north side of the shared road did they tell you that was before

James Feathercoordination meetings it was

Speaker 12nice of them to go ahead and play on our site wasn't it

Speaker 6I mean like to chair feathers point I think that is an important sidewalk

Speaker 4I there's there's a big on every situation there's a balancing act so just so we walk through it this is a picture of the thing so we can put a five-foot sidewalk along here. That means all of that All that greenway is gone. All it's going to be is a five-foot sidewalk. Basically, this is the Oh, yeah. How do you get back

Paul Cunninghamto our Yeah,

Speaker 4sorry. That's

Paul Cunninghamokay.

Speaker 4See, for me, that's like a building it's windows there things like that so it's not yeah I mean I don't have a sidewalk going along the side of my house

Speaker 12and we don't have really any connections like we don't really have any connection when we except for one location where we do provide a sidewalk and Davies has the sidewalk on the site your point with regards to having a landing area is an excellent one though in terms of when someone is on the greenway and comes up against that roadway there it's just an abrupt interface point in perhaps we need to revisit that as a suggestion which we will oh yeah Let me just go through it.

Paul CunninghamLook at the side of the building. Look at the side of the building. Back. Go back here. Davies Road.

James FeatherThere. Yep.

Paul CunninghamLook at the side of that building, the structuring of the wall. You really want a sidewalk against a building with no entrances on it, and all you have is road, sidewalk, and wall, the building wall. to me is not a real amenity or something that's going to get used very much well

Speaker 6there's a sidewalk on the other side of the street right

Paul Cunninghamthere's a sidewalk on the daily side of

Speaker 6the street so which i'm

Paul Cunninghamguessing is that's the side of that so i put a sidewalk in there all you're doing is walking up against building wall that has no doors no entrance you're on the side of a massive structure that i don't think makes anybody feel safe walking up that kind of a long street and an uphill area it's it's not a an amenity type area I'm not suggesting it as an amenity where this is more so for folks on the green sidewalks on the south side of that road on the Davies yeah we understand

Speaker 4but going back to Commissioner Rice's comment would be that look at what like you were talking about walkability and putting a walk like a bridge across to slow traffic down on the greenway on Davies we should coordinate with them about having this on

Tom Kingapplicantthe

Speaker 4walkway like right now the Davies things is just showing a road right here

Tom Kingapplicantalways love us when you can't

Speaker 4right here where the the greenway crosses into this or to our property that should be a like a speed table. Right. So it's naturally going to slow down, and that way it crosses over from the Davies properties to our project, and it makes it a continuous walkway across. Right. And that would probably help on both sides, on both Davies and on our project.

Speaker 6Got it. Okay, last question. My favorite topic, the east-west cross-through street. Did you look at any other, like, I'm sure you did, what other options did you study that maybe wouldn't have required that street? Like, could you have serviced these buildings from that road we were just talking about that you share with Davies? Is there any version of this plan that doesn't require an additional mid-block to cross through street?

Speaker 4When we looked at it, Davies was still being approved. and if you looked at how that is you're coming off of I think Davies has got a problem because you're coming off of judicial taking a right or taking a left and then taking an immediate right if you're going to try to get in there that is you want to talk about traffic problems I think that's traffic problems right up front

James Featherokay agreed okay any questions for us Anything more you'd like to hear from us?

Speaker 12I'd just like to make a good comment. First of all, again, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. Members of the Planning Commission, thank you for the feedback. We've got a lot of note takers here. We've got some ideas spinning. I was talking to Tom about, especially Chairman Feather's comment, I have an idea which we will kick around and see if we can try to find a consensus approach that addresses this. remiss to share before I just wanted to thank staff staff has been very helpful to us as the applicant as we've gone through this process and without their counsel and guidance we would not be nearly as far along in the process as we are so I just want to make sure that I put that out there thank you very much

thank you come come a long way

James Featherfast thank you Thank you, Mr. Frederick and crew. It's always excellent work to support the commission. Okay. Our next work session, I'll let Mr. Napdy take the seat. He's on a discussion of potential review and update to the adopted small area plans for Old Town North Facts, and your back circle.

Paul NaptystaffThank you, Chair Feather and members of the Planning Commission. The purpose of this work session is to discuss a potential review and update to our small area plans. I can

James Feathertake a break. Do we need to make a pause? Do we need to pause? Okay. Oh, okay. Okay, please continue. Okay.

Paul NaptystaffOur goals tonight are to explain to the commission the reasons for potentially updating the small area plans, share some topics the staff proposes reviewing as part of this effort, discuss the potential schedule, and receive feedback from the planning commission on the overall scope and timeline. As a quick review on the small area plans, The idea for smaller plans was generated with the 2019 comprehensive plan. At that time, we already had mixed-use areas designated in the city, and the intent was that we would need the smaller plans to help provide additional guidance on how to create cohesive development as development happens on a piecemeal basis to contribute toward a central vision in each of these areas.

Since that time, we have created and adopted four smaller plans, the fifth one for picket in Maine is not seen as a priority at this time and we don't have a schedule for proceeding with that one the timeline for the creation and adoption of the smaller plans and the comprehensive plan looking forward is shown on this slide so starting with 2019 and the comprehensive plan was rewritten at that time the comprehensive plan was last rewritten back in 2004 so this was a major change with a lot of new recommendations for the city and this was the genesis of when the idea for small area plans was created and then as we mentioned since that time we have established smaller plans for the old town northfax camp washington and fairfax

circle smaller plans with fairfax circle being the last one adopted in 2024. right around that same time we had completed a review of the comprehensive plan in accordance with state code the state code requires that we review the comprehensive plan every five years and determine if we want to update it or not. We're not required to update it, but we must review it at that time. Planning Commission might recall at that time we also questioned whether we should review the smaller plans at the same time, and we agreed that it would be best to hold that off and to do that under a separate effort. And so the smaller plans are now coming back as a potential to review, which is what we're discussing tonight.

I want to point out on this slide, some items are highlighted with orange. items where we created a new document. So the rewrite of the comprehensive plan, for example, was one of those and then the initial creation of each of the smaller plans happened after that. All the items that are not highlighted are where we're just proposing reviewing or updating documents. So the 2024 update of the comprehensive plan was just a review and update of the current comprehensive plan, not a complete rewrite. So now we're proposing beginning an effort and as we get to reschedule, we'll see, 2028 is a review of all four adopted smaller plans. This is not a rewrite, just a review similar to the review of the comprehensive plan that was done in 2024.

Following the schedule per the state code of reviewing each document every five years, then we would then subsequently review the comprehensive plan and then five years later review the smaller plans again. Then looking at the schedule out to 2034, 2035, we're highlighting the comprehensive plan again, suggesting this would be an appropriate time We don't have to make decisions on that right now. In the past, we have the city's in-city's history. We have tended to rewrite our comprehensive plan about every 15 years. This would make sense. But again, if we decide to do it sooner, we could, or if we think things are functioning at that time, we could just do a review at that time as well. But this is kind of a conceptual framework.

And the reason we want to point this out, the difference between creating new documents and reviewing them, is because some questions have come up about the small area plan zoning ordinance update effort that's currently underway so we're showing that highlighted here in 2026 we've had a couple work sessions on this with the planning commission and we back to you in july with another work session and this is an effort that is intended to begin to implement recommendations of the small area plan so we began this shortly after we completed the fairfax circle smaller plan in 2024 on it we hope to finish it up this year but this is really the next thing that comes in line so even though we will be reviewing and potentially updating our

smaller your plans we still recommend that we proceed with doing the zoning ordinance update per our original schedule we can always come back and amend this in the future if needed so the the timeline for this potential smaller plan reviews we're not set at a certain a definite schedule yet but now is that we're discussing the scope initially with you now and plan to come back to you later in the year to confirm the scope with you and then we could begin the work in early 2027 what we're showing in this chart is with the analysis that we plan to do associated with the smaller plan reviews we've broken up into two categories those that could be led by city staff and those that require a consultant analysis those that could be led by city staff we could

begin at any time those that require consultant analysis will have a cost associated with them so depending on what we iron out with the Planning Commission City Council for the scope for this project will determine what consultants will be needed to help us go forward and then we request for funds in the upcoming budget cycle to go towards this effort those funds would not be available until the next fiscal year which would be mid 2027 and so those analyses could then begin to happen at that time so that's why there's two but city staff will be coordinating throughout and we could begin formating a document throughout as well so under the schedule we believe that we would be able to get through this effort by about mid-2028

so the types of topics that will be considered we will step through each of these as part of the goal for tonight's discussion but we've broken it up here into those again that we can do in-house as soon as we have time available, and those that we would require consultant support for. And so what we're asking you to think about as we go through these is which of these are most important for those that do have, that do require consultant support, would have costs associated with them. Be thinking about how important they are to include. We don't have actual cost estimates at this time, but we do hope to come back to you in the future with those. And then also think about things that are important to you

in these subjects. And so we can look at other analysis that might need to be done and determine if those can be done in-house or if we need to seek consultant support for those as well. As I mentioned, we are recommending reviewing and updating all four plans concurrently, even though they're all adopted at different times. The main reason for this is that a lot of the analysis that are listed here, if we're doing the analysis for one activity center, it makes sense to do them all at the same time. It's very little additional effort. And so it's much more efficient. that it would allow us to bring all of our plans, when it comes to formatting, bring them into the same format and make them more consistent with each other.

We didn't identify it in the schedule, but we would obviously do significant community and stakeholder collaboration as we're doing these analysis and updating the plans. And also, as I mentioned, we plan to come back to you at a future work session to confirm the scope before we begin the work. so we'll now step through each of the topics as I mentioned the first one and the color code at the bottom left if it's orange means that it's something we can do in house if it's blue it means that we would be consultant support and I'll remind you of each of those as we go through them so the first is a policy review this is looking at all city policies that have been adopted or completed since the smaller plans were adopted we do this as when we update the

comprehensive plan as well our policies and direction from various entities are always changing and we need to make shifts to accommodate that so similar to how we had to do that for the comprehensive plan we can use that as a resource for when we're updating the comprehensive for the smaller your plans so a couple of examples are shown here and there will be others as well the urban forest master plan was adopted last December a lot of recommendations and they're related to the physical development particularly in activity centers this involves creating connected green spaces conducting what they call the 330 300 analysis where we set a goal of having three trees three mature trees visible from any

residence place of work to school set a goal 30 percent tree canopy coverage in neighborhoods and ensure that every property is within 300 meters of a public green space there are general recommendations on improving connectivity for green spaces by establishing networks and there's a recommendation to conduct a forested area analysis which is something of this in with near-term scope for urban forestry division and this would look at specific areas of the city and look at the specific conditions for natural conditions and those types of things and if any of those happen to be in or near activity centers that provide on how we want to manage them we have the affordable housing strategic plan

that was approved in February a lot of the recommendations here are in line with what was already in our comprehensive plan but there might be more specific recommendations that will help us identify specific parcels where we might want to support or encourage partnerships to accomplish affordable housing there are also recommendations about maintaining what we call naturally occurring affordable housing so those recommendations might affect the plans as well another example is the smaller plans owning ordinance amendments there will be recommendations or actually requirements that come out of this effort that will set more specific numeric standards than we have in the smaller plans and so for example we'll be looking at ways of achieving open

space through development through that effort and by having that in place we'll have a better understanding of what we can actually expect developers to provide on a reasonable basis same with standards for streets and setbacks we had a lot of that tonight our standards aren't codified at this time and so we're seeing different types of street plans on each development that we have and refine our density expectations there are no densities density recommendations in the smaller plans in terms of units per acre and the way our draft zoning ordinance amendments are now we will be adding that type of provision so that will give us better expectations on how much development we should expect on each site other things that are

Green Building Policy, City Council is having a discussion on in a couple of weeks that might have some information on specific recommendations on some of the smaller plans, particularly Northfax that has direct recommendations related to that. The Mooth Fairfax Transportation Study is currently underway. A piece of that is the Old Town Circulation Study, which will have direct recommendations for Old Town, but there will also be recommendations citywide on pedestrian safety. Parks and Recreation Strategic Master Plan is also underway. expect will be recommendations in there about facility needs that may be able to be accommodated with the smaller plans and then others there are numerous other studies that are always going on

so we'll look through those to see where we should find guidance to address the smaller plans a similar task is not looking at just policies but specific projects there are specific location-based projects that are underway that may change the recommendation of the smaller plans and this could include private development projects as well as city investments so for example a study is currently underway on the floodplain area in Fairfax circle there are a lot of recommendations in that smaller plan that related to the floodplain and so the results of this study might change the way we look at that area old town circulation study I just mentioned also study currently or that will begin soon with more detailed analysis of the

Fairfax Circle intersection as you might recall we developed the Fairfax Circle smaller plan there was some uncertainty about what that might look like and so we had to make some assumptions and then another example is the Eaton Place-Chambridge Road intersection at the time the Northfax smaller plan was developed there was a certain model that was envisioned for that intersection it was a traffic circle and there's assumptions that were made based on that design that design has since changed so that affected not only the intersection but what we can do with Eaton Place and so at the time Diet and Eaton Place but now with the changes that have been implemented and that are further proposed at the Eaton Place-Chamber's Road intersection we'll

have to rethink that road diet configuration because it won't align with that new design. We propose also doing what we call a property impact analysis so we'll be looking at each parcel in each of the small area plans and looking at those types of public improvements and amenities that are on each property. The majority of these are new streets and streetscapes and new publicly accessible open spaces. And so there are some properties in some of the smaller plans that have a lot of areas that are proposed to have these types of amenities and some that have very few or none. And so what that results in is that there's kind of a burden on some properties and other properties are able to move forward with development recommendations that have very little contributing

factors to the public good and so we uh our plan to look at this would be to use the more specific standards that we hope to get out of the zoning ordinance and get a better idea of how each individual property is impacted and perhaps redistribute some of those public goods so that they're more evenly distributed.

Matthew RiceA tree canopy

Paul Naptystaffanalysis was conducted in 2023 as a precursor to the Urban Forest Master Plan. This is a tool that we did not have available to us before the majority of our small air plans. The Fairfax Circle small airplane was underway at the time. But this is something that we can use to identify locations for specific trees or stands of trees that are within the activity centers and determine if there are any that are have enough value to them that we would want to adjust the plans to protect them and so this is something that we would be able to use this as initial tool we would go out and fair field verify this is something that is something that is can be done I think at the activity center level the more

difficult to do citywide but our TV centers are small enough and they are also intentionally located in areas that have less forested areas and so there shouldn't be too many of these but those that are there it makes sense to put forth the effort to try to protect them other reoccurring issues so this because gets more into more subjective matters but just on our experience over the past couple of years of seeing development projects or private investment efforts go forward the types of feedback that we've gotten where we might want to revisit some of the recommendations of the plans. These are not the kind of things that can be backed up by analysis. It's more about doing stakeholder outreach, having community meetings, and hearing people think about what's in the plan.

So maximum building heights is one that we've heard about a lot. Another one we've heard about a lot is where ground floor commercial uses are specifically recommended. There have been concerns from developers and in many cases that they don't think commercial uses are viable in all locations and so that's something that we could continue to review others that we are just listing just as examples not necessarily that have to be included but density is a new factor that will be included open spaces where they are in the plans what character they have are they are they are we meeting the goal of having benefits to the overall community not to see activity center and those types of things and then general formatting as

we review the plans we would then adjust the documents again something that we have experienced and are using these documents now for about six years is how easy they are to follow where there are different recommendations on different topics fall in each plan sometimes they're they're not consistent and sometimes it's difficult to find various types of recommendations for a single looking at one part of the document for height, another one for uses. And so we want to make sure that they are usable for all users. City staff has become pretty proficient in this, but we're not everybody. And so we recognize that if somebody wants to know what's proposed near their house, they should be able to find that pretty easily.

Same thing for somebody who's interested in redeveloping their property. They should be able to pretty easily understand what's expected of them. Okay, so getting into some of the efforts that we might need consultant support for, there are a series of numerical analyses that we propose that we at least consider including in this review. So a market analysis could answer, or actually multiple market analysis could help answer several questions that have come up. As the planning commission is aware, there are projected development trends in each of the small area plans in terms of how much development we expect to have interest in over the next 10 to 15 years in terms of housing, office, retail, hotel, those types of things.

As was just discussed with the application we just had, trends have changed over the past couple of years, and so we should be thinking about how we should adjust those expectations. but also answer questions about specific uses. So office has been one of the most volatile types of uses over the past couple of years. And so there's been a lot of interest in replacing office, but we have also heard feedback from our economic development department that some of our office types of office uses are pretty strong. And so we want to be careful about how much we're willing to displace and what factors we might want to consider. and we might even want to consider physical changes to the plans to identify specific office areas that should be retained.

Traffic is something that often comes up. There is a very high-level traffic analysis that was conducted with the initial small area plans. So how much detail we get into this will depend on what types of questions we're trying to answer, but the more detail we get into, the higher the costs and effort will be. And this is one where the cost can get really, really high. So we'll have to be very careful with that. But we will want to look at things like how overall traffic trends could be affected by different types of development. One thing to be aware of here, though, is that if we want to have any kind of specificity, we have to make a lot of assumptions. The small air plants aren't specific about what uses have to go where.

They're intentionally open so that we create a mixed-use environment. site has to be housing or has to be office except in a couple of specific circumstances for various reasons, but for the most part they are intentionally broad and flexible. And so traffic analysis can be dependent on specific locations being or specific uses being at specific locations. And so we just have to be mindful that we might not be able to get to the type of specificity that we get with the types of traffic analysis that come with individual development projects and those types of things because they have much more detail than we will be able to have at a higher level. Utility analysis, something else that came about tonight is a suggestion at looking at some of our utilities,

particularly sanitary and stormwater, what our capacities are, if there are any locations that are really getting close to their limits where we might want to limit the amount of development that feeds a particular

Matthew Riceutility area. Yeah.

Paul NaptystaffThe last two we believe we can do in-house because they're actually already underway, and so we'll just be using them as resources. The first is level of service standards. And so the idea is that we use the level of service study that's currently underway. We expect it will be wrapping up in the next couple of months. But that is providing some background analysis on impacts to some of the city's services from development. That can include things like schools, public safety, parks, and those types of things. have its own intended use of being used to help identify proffers. The data that's behind it is something more than we typically get and we can help use that to identify how we might want to manage growth in our activity centers as a whole. Fiscal impact is something

else that we do in house typically and so we have thought about doing kind of a higher level fiscal impact analysis to determine how implementation of smaller plans will actually impact the city from a fiscal basis based on future growth trends. Another item that would involve needing consultant support, this is something that is specifically recommended in the North Fax Smaller Air Plan and has been supported by some other historic resources studies that the city has done is that to do a what they call a mid-century commercial theme analysis and the idea here is that a good portion of the city developed particularly commercial areas developed during the mid-20th century they have certain architectural and

design characteristics some of which we're trying to move forward with and eliminate but others have kind of a nostalgic sense to them that we might want to try to protect and so particular small airplane but there might be other structures and sites throughout the city that we would want to focus on and so this effort would look at identifying some of those it's already been identified that that we likely don't have any other sites that would fall into this category that actually qualify to be on the national register of historic places like the 29 diner does but it might be able to provide us some informal recommendations on on sites to try to protect this again is optional and it would require consultant support so that

summarizes the the types of themes that the staff is recommending to include at this time as I mentioned we won't begin this effort likely until early 2027 and we the extent of it would depend on how much of the effort is dependent on consultant analysis but we would love to hear feedback from the Planning Commission on whether you think we should proceed with this review and whether there are topics in here that are more important than others or any that you think we might be missing. That's all I have for the staff report. Thank you.

James FeatherThank you. Commissioners. Ms. Luffert.

Kirsten LockhartI think the traffic study is an absolute necessity, but I think it doesn't need to be predictive based on what we envision for the small area plans. I think it needs to be current state. Because if I recall, we don't have data. when was the last significant traffic study done in the city? It's been a long time, I think.

Paul NaptystaffIt depends what you mean by traffic study. It's been kind of a variety of types of analysis. Yeah, like general throughput

Kirsten Lockharttracking through the city.

Paul NaptystaffSorry?

Kirsten LockhartGeneral throughput tracking through the city trips.

Paul NaptystaffYeah, there was an analysis that was done with the multimodal transportation plan around 2017. That's

Kirsten Lockhartwhat I was thinking. Yeah, I was going to say 2018. So I think just current state would be a huge asset. across multiple projects that the city's looking at. I don't think we need to get predictive. We can leave that up to individual developers, but if we can identify the pain points and codify those in the small area plan, like you cannot make this intersection worse, or you cannot impact turns or add a different entry in this particular thoroughfare. This is where you can have a light, this is where you can't, et cetera. I think that's a level of granularity that's missing from the current plans that gets lost in discussion. So I would say that's top priority, worth the money just in terms of utilization

the city's efforts. Can you clarify a little bit when you say market versus financial analysis, what those would contain or not contain? I'm asking in the context of we've had some projects not go through based on financing, finance availability. I would assume that's a reflection on their long-term viability commercially. So do we cover that sort of analysis or is that a bridge too far?

Paul NaptystaffIt's something that we don't get into because a lot of that is dependent on the function of the organization who's trying to do the development. And so it's very difficult for us to try to predict that. So a higher level market analysis can try to, without pinpointing any specific types of development, can try to get a better understanding of where the demand is for various types of uses or certain types of facilities in the city. But the financing market is just, aside from the fact that it fluctuates based on who it is, it also tends to fluctuate very much, very quickly over the course of a year. And so the effort that we put into trying to do something like that would become obsolete, I think, very quickly.

Kirsten LockhartSo then the financial analysis you're talking about is impact of the city, cost of the city of

Paul Naptystaffservices. Yeah, so the market analysis is predicting demand, and then what we call the fiscal analysis is that if a development happens, is that beneficial to the city, is it negative to the city, and how much so? Yes.

Matthew RiceMr. Rice? So I wrote down a couple of things that hopefully would touch on, and you have touched on a few. I think the flooding potentially in the Fairfax Circle area and looking broadly at potential hazards that may impact development, that's a big issue. And I think flooding in particular has come up repeatedly in the Northfax Small Area Plan and in the Fairfax Circle Small Area Plan, but I think keeping our eyes on that is obviously an important one and having that be part of the context and how we discuss areas. Something I spend quite a bit of time during the summer as a fellow of the Virginia Climate Center is to look at urban heat issues. And the data we collected in 2025 does show some areas of the city with significant heat problems.

and I think that if we understood that better we could perhaps as part of a small area plan we could insert some mitigation measures this would obviously overlap greatly with the tree canopy analysis and some of those issues but I think looking at urban heat more broadly and finding design elements or but then an entire small area to mitigate those or make those less significant would be helpful. I was quite surprised at the level of heat up in Fairfax Circle relative to the other parts of the city. Rusty Russell and I, he helped me design the last exercise we did in July of 2025, and we expected Camp Washington to be the problem, and it was not the problem. according to what we see right now camp Washington it was Fairfax circle I'm

interested within the transportation analysis generally and I think what my colleague just communicated about that is is it would be very very useful to not just understand the current state in the city but slightly over the edges of the city in the county so a lot of the problems that are generated may be coming from the county making adjustments to their own throughput capability for places like 29 that feed directly into the city where speed limits drop dramatically and the lanes narrow so understanding the dynamic between the county and the city along the edges would be useful as well something i always mention but it just seemed probably like a lunatic to some people is this thinking about future transportation and developments that may be coming we have waymo

and now in northern virginia in various places uh waymo being discovered and seen and operated so um i think the idea of being in a position within the next 10 years where we need to make adjustments to our transportation infrastructure to allow autonomous shuttles and Right now, it's just sort of piecemeal kind of practical ways to have Uber and Lyft pick people up in certain places. It's a real problem downtown, particularly in a university between Main and North Street, with cars that stop in the lanes of travel and everybody having to sort of quickly merge around them. formalizing this idea of queuing points and infrastructure that would be needed for a great expansion of that sort of ride share and autonomous shuttle concept i think it sounds sort

of science fiction and sort of a futuristic but i do think we need to have some conversations about what that future of transportation in the city will look like and if we can make adjustments more quickly than our neighboring jurisdictions, we're going to be a lot better off. So I think within the housing analysis that we do, obviously density is something that we need to look at and the expectations for density. It's not maybe our position to make recommendations on affordability adjustments, but I think when we do have developers coming in with affordable housing, I think right now we're at 6% for projects that are of a certain size. And I think according to conversations that I've had with Mr. Foreman, I think he's suggesting that we've sort of met the Metropolitan Washington Council on Government's estimate for the housing that we need within the city.

Putting words in his mouth, that probably is inappropriate. And looking at us building a lot more housing, I think the provision of affordable housing in some means is probably should be a higher priority than it is right now. And that may not be something that we do. That may be something city council does or some future group analyzes again. But I think looking at the mix of housing and affordability issues is always of interest to me. um some of those things may not be relevant to a revision of a small area plan or analysis but i think at least some of these may touch on elements that already intended to be done i wanted just to mention the synergy i felt with cunningham quill and their staff and they seem to

be receptive responsive and it seemed to work out well i know there are people who have suggested money on contractors coming in and providing plans for us but i really do think the value that they provided during the uh production of the smaller year plans was substantial and i'd like that to continue

James Featherothers

Matthew Ricemr

Paul Cunninghamkargi

Speaker 6i'll be quick i am very much in favor of updating these i think it's necessary the last two that we just talked about well old town and north facts were 2020 that was COVID so things have changed considerably I think it's time for an update my question Paul is on the timing of this you know like are you how you envision prioritizing because I'd be curious if we look back over the last two years like where is most of the concentration come from in terms of proposals that have come to us in terms of the activity centers I'm guessing most are old town in north facts and so those are also the oldest ones so are you envisioning some type of prioritization I understand the synergies of doing them all at the same time we would get those you know sooner rather than later or

Are you thinking they would all come at once?

Paul NaptystaffInitially that we think they would all come at once but I think as we go through there are any particular Challenges or additional effort to have to be done with any of them. We might not want to hold up the other ones to answer your question yes the majority of the development proposals we've had have been in Old Town in a North X very little in Camp Washington and Fairfax circle but I don't know if that will necessarily affect the schedule

Speaker 6it just seems like the challenge that we are put in and it was shown here tonight is like what are we holding the line on in these plants and what are we gonna look the other way on or make an exception for and it's hard when you're dealing with a plan from 2020 so i i think the refresh of what do we want it to be and where are we holding the line on intersections and street lights and parcels is necessary because we've got these two big ones i mean the mega block in the south is basically done at this point we've got courthouse coming you know like by the time these are updated a lot of the old town small area plan is going to be committed to. So yeah.

Paul NaptystaffNo, I see your point. We'll have to keep that in mind. Perhaps there's a way to expedite those two at the expense of holding off the other two a little longer. There might be some benefit to that. Okay.

James FeatherI'll interject a similar concern.

Kirsten LockhartI was going to say some of those bright line conversations too are going to happen as part of the zoning islands. So I think we'll have a lot of those answers before we even get to revisiting the plans.

James FeatherOthers?

Paul CunninghamI think there's a lot of demographic change going on in the city. And I think when looking at the small area plans, that's the area where most of the activity is going to take place that's going to have the thumbprint or fingerprint of government on it. I guess when I say that and look back and forth, there is good and bad in all of these things we are looking at. When we bemoan traffic, we bemoan the density that has occurred in this area. And then if we think about it, who are we trying to benefit with traffic and make it easier? here, when we look at Virginia Route 123, south of the city and coming into the city, it's a four-lane divided road. The traffic moves along very quickly. When you leave the city to the north, it's a four-line divided road that carries traffic

fairly quickly all the way to George Washington Parkway. When you look in the city of Fairfax on Virginia Route 123, we made a conscious decision to update Rust Curve as a two-lane road to redo the bridge that crosses the creek on Rust Curve and do it so that it would be a bridge that would last for decades and decades from the quality of the construction done. and we made a conscious decision to keep Route 123, a two-lane road, until you get to Route 50. When you put a two-lane road in the middle of the snake, so to speak, fast traffic coming in from one side, fast traffic coming in from the other side, and now everybody shrinks down to crawl through, do you think that was a conscious statement that was made?

Because it was. What's the intention? Are we trying to speed traffic through the city and make the city more convenient for everybody around us to go through or are we trying to design traffic to meet the needs of what we have in the city? And either way, we're going to get significant congestion because as we continue to add housing, building, which we have talked about as being a goal, and we made provision for in our plans, that's where any construction is going to take place. We don't have the land to do additional residential construction in the residential areas. We have the land in the generous business communities that we have that are now looked on as all parking lots and heat islands.

and that's where we're going to put the building and that's that's where our plans talk about so that was a conscious decision to point us in if we're going to have development and add more people as it's termed our share for the metropolitan washington area then that's where it's going to occur and that's where it's occurring as we saw in our project tonight. But if we're going to say we've got enough people in the city, then do we have the right kind of mix of people, the mix of housing and all the things that go with that, and we shut down development, that's going to go on. But that means that commercial development, real estate development, and the rest is going to depend on the people that are here to pay the freight

when it comes to taxes. So one of the challenges that I have, and I've looked at it a long time, is that we are managing density. The whole area is getting more dense. When I came here, which is not that long ago in the big scheme of things, I guess, we were the outlier. The county was less than half a million people and was growing like crazy. And this was where growth was going to occur. It's bypassed us. It's Loudoun County. It's Prince William County, it's the rest. And so we have the density in the middle, but we have a small governing body called the city that still has the county around us. And when we look at this, I think you've got a good program outline to review what we have in the plans.

I think we need serious conversations about transportation because the road structure, which is outlined in the fact book, shows you where the traffic is going to go. And those discussions have occurred when the road connecting University Drive over to Eaton Place went through, and that was a major discussion item. All of these things end up being major discussion items, but never really melded into a concept forgetting the kind of laid-back city that we would like we're going to be an active dense watch your kids on the streets because of traffic going on because there are only certain places people can go and at the center of it all this is where it's going to take us going forward we can't go backwards so

we're managing density and I think what you've outlined here is excellent all of down to looking at what are you working with, what do you want to happen with it. And whether you do studies or not, a good bit of it I think comes down to common sense and working with the plans you have to craft a vision and then stick to that vision to implement it to get a desired outcome. So I'm happy with the program you've laid out. but I see a lot of challenges because every one of us has our own idea of how that's going to be done. And that's where the challenge of being a planning commissioner or a city council member or a member of the community who wants to tell your leader how it's supposed to be done to make it fine for me.

And every one of us hears those comments because everybody would like us to make it fine out. And there is no unanimity in any of that. Good luck.

James FeatherMr. McCarthy, anything from you? I think we've covered it all. Okay. A couple thoughts from my perspective. I continue to seek priorities. You asked about priorities and what may be higher or lower. The whole housing question certainly is one. We've talked about the Council of Government's numbers and rolled them into our plan I think we need to really step up and decide whether those are the right numbers for us or not we shouldn't just take shouldn't have taken them at face value in the first place it's certainly been the point of contention in almost every redevelopment proposal that comes up so in some respects I'm disappointed may take so long to revisit this but it's certainly a priority if we can do something sooner rather than later you may be right that

Our discussion on the zoning text amendments may address some of that, but I think we ought to start thinking about depending less on what those numbers are versus what the right numbers are for us. Your comment about market analysis mentioned office, but we also need to be thinking about retail because the other feedback we get from economic development is they continue to look for people continue to look for retail opportunities here in good quality retail space. So I wouldn't just limit it to offices, but we need to make sure retail is part of that discussion, I think. As far as the mid-century commercial theme, I'd put that lower priority. We've got a lot of mid-century stuff that's not in activity centers, first of all, and

we ought to be doing what we can to encourage replacing that and bringing higher and greater those parcels

Speaker 12the ones that may be in the activity centers there

James Featherare those couple you talked about maybe worth a little bit of a discussion but I don't think I'd put a lot of effort into it we I think somebody's gonna come along with creative idea in spite of us so to me that's probably lower priority you talked about the affordable housing I think we need to think about since there what we want, where we want it, and so forth. But we've also said in other places we want our affordable housing to be integrated with redevelopment so that it's almost indistinguishable. So we need to figure out how to balance those two as well. Sure, maybe some dedicated communities, but we don't want to be developing projects either. Obviously, there's places like some apartment complexes that are more affordable.

Speaker 12But

James FeatherI just think we need to think about what we really want it to look like, how we really want it to integrate into the community. So I think there's a couple of touch points there for us to consider. And I think those are the ones that hit me. Others? Slugger.

Kirsten LockhartI was just going to comment from a pacing and scheduling perspective. I think similar to what we did with the comprehensive plan, as much as we can utilize the work that's just sort of point to it we should do that as a cost and time saver so some of the urban forestry stuff the housing studies that have been done that are being done the safety studies just using those versus kind of recreating the wheel for purposes of the small area plans I I don't see a major budget for consultants being a popular line item with the existing elected body so I we can find efficiencies and like know exactly what we're pointing them towards, the better. And to that end, I was going to ask a quick question about sort of lessons learned from

the previous process with some of these feature assets of each of the small areas that are very difficult to achieve when you're relying on the generosity of a developer to participate. I imagine there would be public outcry if we sort of backed off of those. However, reality has now met the plan, and we've seen it's very difficult to organize around those. Again, some of them are going to come up in the tradeoffs with the zoning, but is there messaging? Is there something that we do to kind of right-size those public assets that are not currently publicly funded?

Paul NaptystaffYeah, that's a good question. I don't think we have a complete answer to that yet, but one of the items in here was to do the property impact analysis. So the messaging might be that rather than removing or reducing the amount of amenities the community can expect through redevelopment, that it's redistributed so that no particular property owner is burdened to the point where it's unreasonable. Without looking at more detail, we can't guarantee that that's the case, so we'll have to think about it more as we go forward. but I think our goal is really not to reduce the amount of amenities that are included in smaller plans, but try to reorient them to make them more reasonable. And if we can't achieve that, I think we'll have to be honest about it and just say this is unreasonable,

and unless the city is willing to invest in it, then it's not going to be achievable. And, you know, if that changes opinions about smaller plans, then that's the route we'd have to take. But the goal is to redistribute first.

James Featheranything else okay you have enough info from us at this point

Paul Naptystaffyes thank you very much okay thank you

James Featherokay we'll reconvene reconvene a regular meeting and go to Mr. Navtee's staff report

Paul Naptystaffthank you again Chair Feather and members of the Planning Commission not a whole lot to report from recent council meetings on topics related to the Planning Commission going back to May 12th they did receive a presentation on the accessory dwelling units that you received back in April 13 as you know from the action you took tonight this will be coming forward to you for public hearing at your next meeting on June 2nd the City Council received a presentation from students at Katherine Johnson Middle School on their proposed designs for North Facts and Courthouse Square this is a presentation of Planning Commission received back in March for upcoming planning commission meetings at our next meeting june 22nd we will have the public hearing

on the accessory dwelling units zoning ordinance amendments you will receive a post application work session on the courthouse plaza redevelopment proposal and you will receive a pre-application presentation for proposed development at 3541 chainbridge road this is a property at the southeast corner of chainbridge road and eaton place currently has two two-story office buildings on it the proposal will include a primarily residential townhouse and two over to development with some retail again that's a pre-application proposal a couple of upcoming things on this Friday June 12th the city ombudsman is hosting a development industry meeting this is something that is done annually usually in June where they invite people who are part of the development

people who do single-family homes to large-scale developments that are involved in our permit process to provide them more information about how the city functions a lot of it has to do with more permitting type procedures but there's interest in receiving a presentation on the small airplane zoning ordinance amendments this year so miss Denny will be giving that presentation to that group if you're interested in attending let me know I can give you the contact information to mr. Sebelia who is doing the RSPs for that RSVPs for done June 25th that's a Thursday will be your next conference of plan implementation group meeting this one focusing on Old Town It will be in the City Hall work session room at 9 a.m

Please contact me if you're interested in coming because we have limited capacity at those meetings That's all we have for the staff report today. Thank you

James FeatherAny questions for staff? Okay Commission comments anybody have something for the good of the body race anything from grab

Matthew Ricethe last problem meeting coincided with a graduation event I had to attend so unfortunately I don't have a report mr.

James Feathercunyam McCarthy only thing for me is the Board of Architecture review met last week and had a review of the Courthouse Plaza proposed development. Lots of feedback and comments, of course, provided there. And they will be at their next meeting seeing the gallery proposal. I'll be participating in that one remotely. I did the last one as well. But these are a couple of big developments, so keep you posted on those. Without further ado, we are adjourned. Thank you.

Kirsten LockhartThank you.